Web Video / High Rollers (2016)

High Rollers is a weekly Dungeons & Dragons Fifth Edition campaign featuring members of the Yogscast. Sessions are livestreamed on Twitch every Sunday and later uploaded to the Yogscast Live channel on Youtube.

The story is set in Arrak, a world that had been blessed with peace and prosperity for many years. This was due to "Pelor's Light", a celestial comet that passed through through the material plane every 100 years and spread positive energy; it healed the sick, blessed the harvest and kept monsters in a deep sleep. However, during its arrival on the 1300th year, the comet was mysteriously destroyed and its shards rained down upon the land below, throwing Arrak into chaos.

46 years after the comet's destruction, which came to be known as the "Lightfall", Arrak has begun to recover: cities and towns have been rebuilt, but the roads and forests are still unsafe, with monsters and other dangerous beings lurking about. When a caravan on its way to Talis'val, the capital of the Dawn Republic, is attacked, four travelers are forced to work together to survive and reach their destination...

With the Lightfall campaign finished, they now play in Mark’s new campaign, “Aerois,” a world of Magitek, airships, and long-forgotten secrets after a cataclysmic war ended centuries ago. They did return to the Lightfall characters for a Sequel Miniseries taking them on a multidimensional adventure to rescue Trellimar from his infernal contract as part of a promotion for the official Fifth Edition module Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus.

In January 2020, Tom and Rhiannon started a gaming stream on the HR Twitch channel called Chaos Twins. And in April 2020, during the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic, they started a full campaign of Curse of Strahd, in addition to the Aerois campaign.

The cast includes:

• Mark Hulmes as the Dungeon Master.

For the first (Lightfall) campaign:

• Chris Trott as Cam Arune Buckland, a human trickster cleric.
• Kim Richards as Jiǔtóu Zhìjī Jīng, a tiefling monk.
• Katie Morrison as Elora Galanodel, a high elf druid.
• Matthew Tofollo as Trellimar Aleath, a drow warlock. (Matt eventually left the show, occasionally returning for cameos, but he was officially replaced by...)
• Tom Hazell as Reynard Ferehorn, a human ranger.

For the second (Aerois) campaign:

• Chris as Lucius Virion Elluin Elenasto, a high elf arcane chromat.
• Kim as Nova V'Ger, an air genasi warlock.
• Katie as Aila, a wild elf barbarian.
• Tom as Qillek Ad Khollar, an aarakocra bard/cleric multiclass.
• Rhiannon Gower as Sentry, a guardian paladin.

Mark also has a show on his own Twitch channel called "Behind the Screen", where he answers viewer questions about his worldbuilding and dungeon mastering for the campaign. His players are very explicitly forbidden from watching lest they learn something they aren't supposed to know yet.

The group's members have varying expertise when it comes to Dungeons and Dragons. Both Mark and Trott play regularly in their own time, while Katie is very familiar with it thanks to Critical Role, but hadn't played the game herself prior to the series. Kim, Matt, Tom, and Rhiannon were all essentially newcomers to the whole thing when they started.

Not to be confused with the game show of the same name; the only thing involved in both are dice.

Kim has GMed a couple of one off episodes set in the same world but on the opposite side of the continent with different characters two of which have been played by Katie and Matt.

The Lightfall Campaign contains examples of:

Lightfall Campaign tropes

• Aerith and Bob: Calvin and Amelia sound oddly normal when compared to names such as Renwyn, Queen Ayandris, Gulthia, Vixanis and Cune.
• A God Am I: Tharizdun the Beholder thinks they're actually Tharizdun the god.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Will-o'-wisps, malevolent beings that try to lure people to their doom. The group (minus Cam) has the misfortune of running into one in Episode 3.
• Ambiguously Gay: Enoran Swiftwind of the Unicorn's Patch acts like a stereotypical gay man, and shows mild interest in Cam when he first meets him. His sexuality is never explicitly stated, however.
• Ancient Tomb: The underground complex where the four adventurers wake up turns out to be an old interconnected set of burial chambers for elven royalty.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Renwyn, who orchestrated the attack on the caravan and helped Gulthia kill its passengers. However, it later becomes clear that he had been under the influence of some kind of spell and does everything in his power to stop her after her influence over him is broken.
  • Trixania Darkmagic, who while absolutely despising Cam and being willing to go to any length to tarnish his image, doesn't actually wish him any real harm. After impersonating Cam so well that she starts attracting people trying to kill him, she even begrudgingly teams up with him to take them down.
• Ass-Kicking Pose: In Episode 3, after pulling off an acrobatic manoeuvre to reach her teammates, Jiǔtóu enters a martial arts stance while brandishing her guandao. Kim adds in a Pre-Asskicking One-Liner for good measure:
  Kim: Ready, bitches?
• Badass Boast: Jiǔtóu makes one in Episode 3 to shut down an angry mob of villagers that were intending to kill an innocent drow woman.
  Jiǔtóu: Listen to me, humans! We have been investigating what is happening in your village, and I will tell you now, this is not the work of a drow! If you come here and you harm her, I will give you something to worry about!
  Villager: How do we know that you're not working with her, that you're some sort of demon, that you're killing our people as well? How do we know we can trust you?!
  Jiǔtóu: Trust me, if I was killing your people, you would know about it!
• Big Damn Heroes: Elora's entrance with Cassandra, Korak and the guards at the beginning of Episode 15.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Gulthia, who comes across as very pleasant and friendly, but was actually behind the ambush on the caravan.
• Booby Trap: Most of the elven temple's traps were disabled by Renwyn, making the adventurers' exploration of the chambers rather less hazardous than it would have been. Cam still manages to bumble into one of these, however, triggering a poison dart trap that causes him to briefly trip out.
  • Jiǔtóu later stumbles across a flame jet in a sealed vault, but as a tiefling, she resists most of the damage.
• Bring My Brown Pants: Cam pisses himself while exploring the underground cave. The dryad Gulthia later has flowers grow out of his crotch to absorb the moisture.
• Bus Crash: The group was forced to part ways with Vixanis in Episode 6 due to Jiǔtóu's sudden death, leaving the drow to go to Briarcrest to continue her investigations into the dwarven thief she'd been hunting. Cue Episode 10, and the party finds Vixanis' dead body, delivered to them as a message to not pry into the affairs of the Broken Sky, a collective looking to overthrow Korak.
• Butt-Monkey: Dmitriv was on the receiving end of much physical abuse by the players and the Broken Sky pretty much the entire time. Kind of a Downer Ending when Dmitriv died at Cam's fault, even though he wanted to help him. Becomes Averted though when he later comes back as a fiery spirit consumed with revenge.
• Bystander Syndrome: Following the Lightfall, the high elves decided that the various elven spires should retreat into the Feywild, leaving Arrak to be rebuilt by others. Subverted, with some of the spires eventually deciding they didn't want to be bystanders anymore, leading them to return to Arrak. Elora is very much an embodiment of this sentiment, which is why she set out to contact other spires and convince them to come back from the Feywild.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In Episode 7, the elven forces only arrive after the party has defeated the orcs that were invading the spire. Justified, in that a smaller group of orcs had been engaging them as well, preventing them from helping sooner.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Episode 1 ends with the group encountering the ghost of the elven queen Ayandris, who, upon seeing Jiǔtóu display the circlet of the queen's daughter as a sort of peace offering, shrieks at them, calling them "murderers".
  • In Episode 5, the group confronts the hag who's been terrorizing the village of Tallfield. Jiǔtóu appears to settle on trading Cam for Tallfield's safety, but just as she prepares to hand him over, she whispers "trust me" in his ear. The hag catches on to this and prepares to cast a magical spell, but Jiǔtóu shoves Cam forward, causing him to collide with the hag and interrupt her spell. The episode cuts off there, though it's likely that the move destroyed any pretense of peaceful negotiation.
  • Episode 13 ends with Jiǔtóu and Trellimar speaking with one of the sub-leaders of the Broken Sky group regarding possible membership following a poorly-planned assault on one of their operations, with Elora and Loben imprisoned in a cell.
• Compensating for Something: When Jiǔtóu retrieves her guandao, Cam marvels at its size and jokes that she's "overcompensating". She is not amused.
• Deus ex Machina: Cam's first attempt at casting Divine Intervention succeeded with a 3% on a 10% chance, summoning an angelic servant of Avandra to banish Crownrend from the material plane forever.
• Dirty Business: Gulthia, and especially Renwyn, regret that they needed to resort to the sacrifice of innocents in an attempt to appease the violent spirit of Ayandris. Subverted when it is revealed that Renwyn was enthralled by Gulthia, who was killing people to activate an ancient ritual, with the bloodshed awakening Ayandris' spirit.
• Dynamic Entry: After almost 20 episodes on his own, Barris reintroduces himself to the party by running in with reinforcements, throwing a spear from maximum range, and landing a crit on a dragon.
• Effortless Amazonian Lift: During the attack at the Masons Guild, Jiǔtóu downs a potion of Hill Giant Strength and singlehandedly carries Korak's unconscious body away from the fight.
• Empathic Weapon: In episode 21, Jiǔtóu find a magic bracer that calls itself Crownrend. It was created by the demon Mephistopheles to overthrow tyrants (such as Meph's master, Asmodeus), but escaped from him becaus he was just as much a tyrant and the bracer refused to be in his service. He hitched a ride on a lesser servant, who was summoned out of the Abyss and died immediately. It offers its aid to Jiǔtóu, so long as she continues her crusade to fight tyrants. Eventually, Crownrend started corrupting her, and she is forced to abandon it before she kills one of her allies. It quickly joins Elora's enemy Silval in her quest to destroy the Elven Nobility, consuming her far quicker than he threatened to corrupt Jiǔtóu. The next time they see evidence of the two of them, Silval had marched into a salvage town, killed the foreman and self-proclaimed mayor, and told everybody else they were free of him. As soon as the party hears this they take it as fact that she is under complete control of Crownrend. After an intense 2 1/2-hour (real world time) battle, the party defeats Crownrend and Silval in their symbiotic form, kill Silval, and with the aid of Divine Intervention, banish Crownrend from the Material Plane forever.
• Epic Fail:
  • After one of her displays of badassery, Jiǔtóu attempts to kick the doors of a bar open, unaware that they open outwards, rather than inwards. A low roll from Kim results in this trope: the doors don't budge an inch.
  • In a similar vein, Trellimar goes to leap through a closed window, but a low roll on an Acrobatics check results in him slamming into the window, before falling back onto the ground.
  • There's quite a few of these in Episode 31 which is even called "A Plan Gone Awry". Chief of these being Trellimar plummeting through a building after the magical bronze gryphon he'd been riding is affected by the fall shards nearby after he'd purposefully run across the city to get out of their radius and activate it.
• Fantastic Racism: Trell's species, the drow, has a rather bad reputation, having only recently moved to the surface (they initially lived underground, until the Lightfall). Jiǔtóu also gets hit with this occasionally. Cam is always quick to come to their defense, however.
  • The Winter Spire arc has a number of the elves being subtly this against the other races in varying degrees.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: All tieflings that have appeared thus far are essentially Chinese, sharing the culture, names and dress.
• Fluffy Tamer: Jiǔtóu tries to be this in Episode 5, but Smiles the Death Dog refuses to play nice. Her efforts are pretty much destroyed when Trellimar decides to fire a crossbow bolt into the monster's neck, causing Smiles to attack them both. Jiǔtóu is not pleased.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Both "Smiles" the Death Dog and "Handsome" the Half-Ogre qualify.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Of the Black Comedy variety. After Jiǔtóu dies, their video editor superimposes a skull over Kim's face, leading her (once the group notices) to walk out of the room to talk to him. After a few minutes, the skull reappears over the face of Jiǔtóu's picture on the backdrop; this time, no one seems to catch it.
  • Something similar occurs in Kim's DMing prequel; [[spoiler: when Barnabus is dragged into the bathtub, his nameplate changes from his name to "this guy is so dead".]
• Gag Penis: In episode 6, Trott asks if he can roll for Cam's penis size, and Mark obliges, telling him that whatever roll he gets is what he ends up with. Trott rolls a nat 20.]
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The core four, though the balance occasionally shifts one way or the other when NPCs join the party.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In Episode 7, Lieutenant Torwen Ialdes of the Spire of Autumn joins the party to help them vanquish the orcs threatening her home. Episode 8 switches her out for Falk, another Guest-Star Party Member played by Martyn.
  • Episode 13 features Loben Trogdor, a Gnome Sorcerer played by Caff of the Caff Cast.
  • For a few episodes the party is joined by half-drow Mina, played by Kat.
  • Reynard was originally just a guest party member, filling in the fourth player slot after Matt left, but for various reasons (among them being that Tom was always available to play), he became the permanent fourth party member.
• Hero of Another Story: During Jiǔtóu's solo adventure, she is shown a vision of Barris gearing up for an adventure of his own, inspired by Cam and the rest of the party to become a hero. He returns 19 episodes later, having noticeably leveled up, and deals a crit and the penultimate blow against the group's first dragon.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Trellimar and Elora, who is only 4'10'' (1,47 m). Despite her short stature and low strength stat, she still manages to pull him out of a window, away from an attacking will-o'-wisp, in Episode 3.
• House Rules: The campaign is played according to the D&D 5th Edition's rules, albeit with some slight variations here and there: dark vision is swapped out for low-light vision, and dice damage is doubled for critical hits, instead of requiring two dice rolls. Drows' allergy to sunlight is also mostly ignored for practicality, since one of the main characters is a drow and would thus be disadvantaged on a majority of his actions. Most importantly, characters are only allowed one resurrection, which will always come with some kind of negative consequence (in Jiǔtóu's case, she was aged down to about 15-years-old). If they die after having already been resurrected once, they stay dead permanently unless a God chooses to resurrect them or super powerful magic is used.
• I Call It "Vera": Cam's collection of daggers includes "Duracell" (glows in the dark), "Elfy" (of elven make) and "Nimbus" (returns to Cam's hand at his command after being thrown).
• Incredibly Lame Pun: While making weird symbolic gestures at Gulthia, Cam asks what she is. Cue the following exchange between him and Elora.
  Elora: She's a dryad.
  Cam: (motioning at his crotch) She dries things. Dryad, yes.
  Elora: (exasperated) She's a protector of nature.
• In-Series Nickname: Trellimar is often shortened to Trell or, more humorously, Trellibelli.
• Kill It with Fire: If Jiǔtóu isn't cutting wood creatures up with her guandao, she's setting them on fire with her torches. After dying and being resurrected, she gains an explicit fire affinity, and even later a magic weapon which deals fire damage when activated.
• Meaningful Name: Torwen Ialdes is Sindarin for "Call of the Forest".
• Mood Whiplash: Episode 11 which starts out serious due to Vixandra's death then becomes fairly light hearted because of Cam's pranks and jokes then back again after Cam commits manslaughter on Dimitri and burns his store down then lightens again because of Granny Trell's appearance then serious again as Cam's fate is pondered and decided.
• The Need for Mead: Finny's tavern, the Alabaster Cask, is visited a few times during the Tallfield arc.
• No-Sell: In Episode 6, Jiǔtóu triggers a fire trap while exploring a hidden vault, but since she's a tiefling, she is pretty much fire-resistant. At most, her clothing gets a bit singed.
• Odd Friendship: After the good Korak explains his situation to her, he and Jiǔtóu quickly learn to bond over their shared hatred of the real Korak.
• Off with His Head!: Jiǔtóu dispatches her first opponent in this manner. After beheading it, she continues without pause, using her guandao to take out the enemy that had been positioned behind her, before finishing in a classy Victory Pose.
  Mark: You look exceedingly badass.
• Pietà Plagiarism: When Korak is rendered unconscious during the attack at the Masons Guild, Jiǔtóu downs a potion of Hill Giant Strength and carries him out of the building like this.
• Plant Person: The dryad Gulthia is a classic example, possessing barky skin, hair of leaves and Garden Garments.
• Please Wake Up: Cam's first reaction to seeing Jiǔtóu's dead body is a half-hearted "She's just resting." His second response is to pray to his god for a miracle.
• Power Nullifier: Shards of the comet, which can be found all over Arrak, usually act like these, negating cantrips and severely weakening magic attacks that are cast within their radius. While rare, certain fragments cause the opposite effect, instead enhancing the magical power within range - the shards don't discriminate either, meaning it strengthens magic attacks fired by the shard carrier and magic attacks fired at the shard carrier.
• Pointy Ears: Both Elora and Trellimar have these as part of their character design, being elves, albeit different kinds.
• The Promised Land: Korak has shaped the Dawn Republic and the city of Talis'val to be this, a place where working people can come together to create a better future.
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: This is eventually revealed to be the motivation of the Big Bad of the Broken Sky, Princess Felliana. During the lightfall she was impaled by a Dawn Shard and lived, and has lived the entire time since in constant agony because the Dawn Shard couldn't be removed without killing her.
• Real Time: Done out of necessity due to absences. When Trott and Katie were gone for an episode, respectively, a single in-game day took as long as three and a half episode (and still isn't over as of episode 15) due to an important event happening at the end of that day. The real time length of this day has been approximately 10 to 11 hours as of now.
• Redemption Equals Death: Although the group comes to his rescue inside Gulthia's tree, Renwyn ultimately decides to perish with it, to repent for the innocent lives he took while he was under Gulthia's thrall.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Queen Ayandris' eyes turn red after she witnesses the desecration of her daughter's remains by Cam.
  • Utilized by Jiǔtóu several times as well.
• Refuge in Audacity: After desecrating the remains of queen Ayandris' daughter, Cam doesn't apologize and put the mace back as the queen demands. Instead, he disguises himself as a goblin, claiming that it was his true form all along and that he had infiltrated the group precisely because he wanted to destroy the daughter's remains. He then drops the mace and runs off - as a bonus action, he flips off Ayandris. Hilariously, the queen buys it (meaning she is no longer hostile towards the other three) and calms down completely once Elora places the mace back in the sarcophagus.
  • For further hilarity, after the group defeats the true enemy in the tombs, queen Ayandris appears to thank them for helping her to rest in peace once more. Cam then speaks up, claiming it was her beauty and power that broke his "curse" and returned him to his human form. One hefty Deception check later, and Cam gets away with his ill-conceived desecration scot-free, with Ayandris giving him the mace with her blessing.
• Running Gag:
  • Mark rolling low whenever a monster goes to hit Jiǔtóu, allowing her to dodge most attacks. By contrast, Trellimar usually gets the full brunt, which makes it all the more ironic that Jiǔtóu is the first player character to actually die.
  • Cam almost vomiting every time Elora transforms into a dire wolf. Or a bear. Or an octopus...
  • Trellimar gets knocked unconscious practically Once an Episode. Most of the episodes where he doesn't get knocked unconscious are episodes with no combat encounters in them.
• Shoulder-Sized Dragon: Trellimar's pet is a dragon the size of a housecat, and spends most of his time on Trell's shoulder. It is actually a pseudodragon, not a true dragon, and won't grow much larger than its current size.
• Sixth Ranger: Reynard first appears in episode 41 as a Guest-Star Party Member, but after accompanying the party for most of the time since it was announced that he would become a permanent member of the team in episode 56, officially replacing Trellimar.
• Slave Race: Most tie flings are this to the dragon born
• So Much for Stealth: In Episode 1, Matt rolls low on his very first stealth check, causing his character Trell to step onto a branch which snaps. This attracts the attention of a wooden creature that was inside in the room Trell and the rest were about to enter, leading to the group's first combat encounter.
• Spin to Deflect Stuff: Jiǔtóu uses her guandao in this manner to fend off a swarm of hostile ravens in Episode 3.
• Take a Third Option: At one point both Cam and Trell are subtly competing for the attention of the Winter Spire's princess, with only one seat being available next to her at the formal dinner that night. Jiǔtóu takes it while the boys are staring each other out.
• Team Pet: In episode 7, the party gains one in the form of Granamyr, Trellimar's freshly-hatched pseudodragon. He's so cute, the entire room gets briefly sidetracked from their tactical planning. He's completely invisible to Crownrend, and shortly after that revelation it's revealed that he was the key to the vault that held the mask Trell was tracking down for his patron. Fortunately Trellimar is able to bring him back.
• Three-Point Landing: Cam does one in Episode 6 and suffers fall damage for it - it is quite hard on the knees, after all.
• Torso with a View: In Episode 1, Trellimar's Eldritch Blast punches a hole into one of the reanimated bodies attacking them, but the vines controlling it allow it to quickly recover.
  • Trell has a knack for doing this to enemies he hits with his blast actually. The others get in on it too sometimes in their own fashion.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: The group seems to be developing into a version of this as they continue spending time with each other; Jiǔtóu, Trellimar and Elora bond over their mutual exasperation with Cam, who remains largely unfazed and cheery, though he too can snipe back at times.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: How the story starts off. The four adventurers awaken in an underground cave complex and are confused as to how they wound up there. Cam is quick to make light of the situation:
  Cam: Not again. This happens every week.
• Wham Episode: Episode 6. The party manages to defeat the hag that had been terrorizing Tallfield and is a little rattled, but otherwise ready to continue their journey to Talis'val. Then, Jiǔtóu dies while exploring a vault with Elora and the team frantically journeys to an elven spire in the north to revive her.
• Wham Line:
  • During the Shroud of Eyes arc.
  Crownrend: (to Jiǔtóu) "Who do they speak to? Who is this 'Granamyr'?"
  Jiǔtóu: "The little dragon."
  Crownrend: "I sense no dragon..."
  Jiǔtóu: "It's a pseudo-dragon..."
  Crownrend: "There are no other creatures here but you four..."
  • And then a big one during the Return to Graybell arc, after Cam casts a spell to tell him hidden knowledge about the city:
  Mark: The City of Bells sits under darkness. A terrible power has been unleashed. Power of another world, summoned by a figure once held in respect. The Dirge Singer has been brought to Graybell. The land dies and the people suffer. Blood is farmed as though cattle itself. Keran wields the power of Strahd
  Katie: Mother Fucker!
  Kim: Jiǔtóu's gonna go all the way back to the desert.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Master Guan Yin's accent is a strange blend of Welsh and Indian.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Everyone's reaction to Cam/Trott deciding to use a cursed mace to destroy the remains of Queen Ayandris' daughter. Naturally, Ayandris herself is livid.
  Kim: You literally just desecrated the girl who was killed by the mace, which is the reason why the queen is angry and now you've just like smashed her bones up even more! Why didn't you just pee on it as well?! Jesus!
  Katie: Don't give him ideas!
  • And later, Cam's decision to try and smoke Dimitriv out of his shop by setting it on fire.
• Written-In Absence:
  • Episode 3: Since Trott was in the United States at the time to attend PAX South, Cam mysteriously disappears and it's explained at the beginning of Episode 4 that he got distracted by a pretty (married) woman and attempted to put the moves on her, to no effect.
  • Episode 13: With Trott being in the United States again, Cam is explained as having gone off on his own to practice for the performance, leaving the other three to investigate the Black Valley Brewery.
  • Episode 14: Katie was absent during this episode, and it was covered by saying Elora was off to get help for the group. While Trott returned, his character was supposedly still practicing his performance, so he played a temporary character: a Broken Sky recruit named Wald. In Episode 15, it was revealed that "Wald" was in fact Cam all along, simply disguised.

The Aerois Campaign contains examples of:

Aerois Campaign tropes

• Aborted Arc:
  • After the events of "The Purge", everything the party had planned and all of their quests are thrown out the window because 1) Sentry was dead and resurrecting her was top priority, and 2) they weren't even on the same continent anymore.
  • And then again in episode 69, when an exploding Hadar rift shunts them to the plane of Elysium, which had been taken over by Starbane Empire. At least nobody died this time.
• Acting for Two: In the very brief interim between Sentry being resurrected and Oriya parting ways with the party, Rhiannon played them both at the same time. And then again when Qill gets resurrected and Tom has to play both Pyri and Qill.
• Actually Pretty Funny: When Sentry died, Rhiannon was hit pretty hard and had to walk off the stream to take care of herself. After coming back, and seeing the rest of the party get given a chance to resurrect her, she very quickly cheers up as she realizes that this means they have to haul her 300-pound lifeless body around until they bring her back to life.
• Affably Evil: When they first face Kalus Starbane, he is very polite to them and deliberately spares them as a repayment for having protected his daughter (if unwittingly) so steadfastly, and even gives them the resources to resurrect the recently died Sentry in gratitude.
• Afterlife Antechamber: We get a few examples of this during some of the party's near-death / death experiences.
  • Notably averted with Sentry, since she's a guardian - for her, she just falls asleep and doesn't wake up.
  • When Quill dies, Hesper lifts his soul into the sky so Kelara can guide him past the cradle. They chat for a while before he goes into the afterlife.
  • Most notably, Aila gets to see one of these when she tanks multiple bolts of lightning when they get to the Valley of the Storm, meeting the Storm King and getting a belt which increases her strength.
• Ain't Too Proud to Beg: When faced with the prospect of an Archdevil invading the world, the party skips straight to attempting to bargain with him, until they realise they can stop his plan.
• All There in the Manual: Mark's "Behind the Screen" streams provide a lot of extra information on the stuff the party encounters. It's also the only place to learn how to spell almost all of the names.
• As Long as There Is Evil: What Root Prime said concerning any potential plan to completely destroy Hadar. As long as there is hunger in the universe, Hadar's power will have a path to return.
• Atlantis: Sentry's memories of the last day of Solwynn are very similar to Atlantis', with the city being pulled under the ocean as a direct result of the Sundering.
• Catapult Nightmare: The vision where Nova first sees Hadar leaves her waking up screaming in terror.
• Catchphrase: Aila tends to respond to most threats by announcing "I'm gonna whack it."
• The Chosen One: The party knows four different chosen ones, and all four of them are in the party or closely associated with them.
  • Valla is a mysterious young girl with inherent magical power, under the protection of the church of Siaska, because she's the long lost daughter of Kalus Starbane.
  • Qill is explicitly the Chosen One of his god, H'esper, who sends him dreams and points him in the direction of things he wants influenced.
  • Sentry is a unique model of Guardian that must be brought to the City of Glass, dead or alive, or the fate of all guardians may hang in the balance.
  • Aila is the Last of Her Kind, a member of a long-thought extinct tribe of Elves. She was actually born more than 500 years ago, on another planet.
• Cosmic Horror Reveal: Episode 32, where it's revealed that Hadar the Dark Hunger is attempting to infiltrate Aerois, and that more than 500 years ago Starbane was originally fighting him instead of the other gods.
• Cursed with Awesome: Lucius's opinion of The Fairy Princess's Crown, which turned him into a giant pixie and gave him new powers while being, in the Dungeons and Dragons sense, cursed. Everybody else disagrees with him.
• Darkest Hour: Episode 26, "The Purge". By the halfway point Sentry is dead, and the rest have been captured, reduced to 1 hit point, and are out of spell slots.
• Deal with the Devil: After Sentry died, only a few hours later they were faced with an imfamous maker of deals: An Archdevil. However, the deal he proposes was just not worth it, so they close the portal he was going to come through, throwing away their chance... until the portal opens again and presents them with another equally powerful creature: Kalus Starbane. As it turns out, they've been protecting his daughter for the last few weeks, so he was grateful, and gives them a chance to bring Sentry back, but they have to work for it.
• Death by Looking Up: The party manage to kill four people this way at once, when they drop a church bell on top of some cultists.
• Despair Event Horizon: After Sentry's death, Nova starts acting detached and blames herself for what happened, saying that it was her failure that got Sentry killed. The other three are also affected, but less so, and Lucius even goes out of his way to try and help her stop blaming herself.
• Disaster Dominoes: Starbane's summoning is the result of a long chain of these for the Party. Their failure to stealthily infiltrate the Abbey means they have to fight a long drawn-out battle to reach the secret tunnel. Because of the long drawn-out battle they get beaten down to the point that one of them is dead and the others are knocked unconscious and captured. Because they were captured, they couldn't stop the Abbottess from activating the portal to Phlegethos. Because they didn't know how else to close the portal to Phlegethos, Valla has to input the code she mysteriously knows to change the portal's destination. That code is the one to Starbane's throne room.
• Faux Affably Evil: The party encounter so many people like this they give the phenomena of them getting duped a nickname based on the first such encounter: Getting "Brookstoned."
• Funny Background Event: When Sentry has died and the rest of the party considers bargaining with an Archdemon to get her back, Rhiannon can be seen shaking her head and emphatically mouthing No over and over again, unacknowledged by the other players.
• Golden Snitch: In the game Grazzt played with the party and Thalia for the party to win Three Wishes, all of the 14 cards are worth positive or negative points based on whether they are upright or reversed respectively. Except the Broken One. If it's flipped upright, the party wins. Flipped reversed, the party loses. They lost.
• Golem: One of Mark's new homebrew races is the Guardians, a race of very advanced Golems created to be soldiers, workers, and servants. The technology to make them has been lost, and they are designed to only live 15 years, though long-term hibernation does pause their countdown. When they reach the end of their time, they either just shut off, never to turn back on again, or go feral. Player character Sentry is an even more advanced version, designed to be a Royal Guard in an ancient city.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In a twist from how it happened in the first campaign, the first new player character to join the party was played by one of the regular players, Rhiannon specifically, because Sentry had been killed and the others given a quest to resurrect her, so she wouldn't have to just sit out the intervening sessions. The exact same thing happens with Tom when Qill dies.
  • In episode 34, Ravs plays a human storm sorcerer named Johan - a mysterious fisherman touched by Hesper and Zephyr who the party encounter on their way out of Myrskyr.
    • He returns in episode 55 on a magical storm cloud to remind the party of duties they need attend to in the Valley of the Storm.
    • The party encounter Johan again in episode 89, where he helps them navigate through a temple of Hesper at the center of the valley.
  • In episode 48, Bouphe plays a triton bard named Drexciya, who temporarily joins the party to help them infiltrate a sahuagin settlement and save her people.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: In a complete inversion, all of the female or female-presenting characters in the party are melee-based or use a combination of magic and melee, whereas the two male characters (Qill and Lucius) are almost entirely magic-based.
• Hidden Elf Village: Aerois is this to the rest of the universe, a rogue planet hidden far from any stars, deliberately removed from the conflict between Starbane and Hadar.
• Identical Stranger: As it turns out, Lucius looks exactly identical to an ancient prince from another world, who an elf from Aerois fell in love with and went crazy trying to physically meet.
• Inopportune Voice Cracking: Kim intentionally makes her voice crack whenever Nova is the most stressed out or scared.
• The Needless: Guardians don't need to eat or drink, but they can if they want to. They do however require intermittent rest periods, just as often as a human would need sleep.
• Necromancer: In Kalie's Rest the party meets a Guardian named Breeze who says he has a way to recharge Guardians and increase their lifespan from the normal 15 years. They agree to help one of their other Guardian friends who is at the very end of his 15 years, and when they arrive at the ritual they find that the source of the energy Breeze was going to recharge with was a Human Sacrifice.
• Mad Scientist: Nova, most evidently when she concocts a plan to nullify the resource cost of Raise Dead by having Qill get struck by lightning in the Valley of Storms, even if it doesn't get to happen and they resurrect Qill more conventionally.
• Person as Verb: After their first such experience, the party starts to call being tricked by people pretending to be nice to them "getting Brookstoned".
• Playing with Fire: In Kalie's Rest they encounter a cult who specialize in fire magic.
• Please Wake Up: Similar to Cam reacting to Jiǔtóu's death in the Lightfall campaign, Lucius's first reaction to hearing that Sentry has died is to just rationalize it away, saying that it couldn't possibly be true, they're too strong to die. He does the same when Qill is killed, as well.
• Put on a Bus: After Sentry is resurrected, with her role as Rhiannon's temporary character fulfilled Oriya parts ways with the party, taking Skorb back to his previous owner while they head off to Gusthaven.
• Race Against the Clock: After Sentry dies, the party has 10 days to find somebody with the ability to cast Raise Dead before Sentry is gone forever. Even with Skaldi casting Gentle Repose to extend the time limit they manage to bring her back within seven days, but now they have to do it again with Qill.
• Saying Too Much: Out-of-character, Tom has known habit of accidentally reminding Mark about things he forgot to do, errors which more often than not were in the party's favor.
• Shock and Awe: Aila has a special racial affinity with lightning. After she finds a Javelin of Lightning, she has the Midwife's Forge merge it with her hammer to create a lightning hammer that returns to her hand.
• Small, Secluded World: As Starbane reveals, Aerois was a rogue planet out in the middle of space, which Siaska found and created Life for, and sealed away from the rest of the universe with the Cradle.
• Spell My Name With An S: Even in Mark's own notes he sometimes spells names different each time, so it's hard to know the exact spelling of some of the names.
• Summon to Hand: After Aila gets her hammer merged with a Javelin of Lightning, it gains the ability to return to her hand after she throws it.
• Tagalong Kid: Valla is this for the party, as a Teen Genius who wants to be an Action Girl. She's very resourceful, deceptively powerful, extra stealthy, and at one point the party admits that she may be smarter than any of them. They struggle pretty hard to balance her being a useful part of the team with her being safe.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Aila is having such a hard time tracking down her lost tribe on Aerois... Because she wasn't born on Aerois, and her tribe isn't from there.
• Wham Episode: This campaign has an established pattern that in return for the death or ressurection of a character, the party gets Earth-shattering revelations.
  • Episode 26, "The Purge": Sentry dies attempting to infiltrate the Brightflame Abbey, and the rest of the party then meets the Big Bad Kalus Starbane face-to-face, having given him an avenue to infiltrate Aerois, and learns that Valla is his long-lost daughter.
  • Episode 32, "Whispers of the Void": Qill dies fighting a Hadar-touched former Starbane agent, and the rest of the party learns just what Hadar is, and that Aila's lost tribe, and Aila herself, were originally from another planet enlisted by Starbane to fight Hadar.
  • Episode 36, "Goblins and Guardians": Sentry is resurrected by the Midwife's Forge, and the party learns more about what happened to Solwynn and where the City of Glass is.
  • Episode 38, "The Elensato Enquiry": Qill is resurrected by a high priestess of Siaska, meanwhile Lucius's entire family is assumed dead in an explosion that destroyed their home, but Lucius himself doesn't believe that they would let that happen to themselves and is investigating the conspiracy that announced him dead as well to destroy his family's company.
• Wham Line:
  • At the end of a quest to stop a crazy fire cult from unwittingly summoning a army of demons from one of the Nine Hells, they manage to get to the portal they were going to come through, distract the Archdevil while they stall for time, and then Valla punches in a seemingly random code to change the portal's co-ordinates, closing the portal. Woohoo, day saved! And then the portal opens again, to a new location. It's a dark room, lit by points of light that glitter like stars. At the far end of the room is a man, sitting on a throne. The party instantly recognise him: Kalus Starbane. He gets up, surprised, and walks through the portal, seeing Valla standing in front of the portal controls, and says to her:
    "Valla, my daughter..."
  • The party successfully manage to resurrect Sentry, and with Pyri's watch, return to Gusthaven to have Quill revived. Upon arrival, however, they're led to a room where a High Elf mentions there is something to discuss. The party is then led to the Elenasto estate, where Mark's description goes as follows:
    "As you round the corner, you expect to see the beautiful manor with the ivy crawling up the trellises. You expect to see the large stone buildings. But you don't see that. You see blackened stone and ruined timber, scorch marks, and an empty shell of a building that is no more.
• Who Would Be Stupid Enough?: The rest of the party's reaction to Lucius killing two cows because he had never seen cows before and assumed they were evil. They're just as amazed at the lack of knowledge as they are the act.