Deep within the blighted land, which the vengeful woods has reclaimed and lies in a abandoned manse and the forgotten manners of wealthy landowners and foppish nobles, built
in hubristic defiance of the old forest, tales spread among the borderlands, of one such manner, a lavish plantation atop sweeping hills that overlook terraced fields, where,
before the spirits of old Caldur reclaimed the
What was theirs?
Indolent lords and ladies gorged themselves on progressively rarer and more esoteric delicacies to sate their English hunger, eventually consuming their servants and even each
other in orgastic, cannibal gluttony.
Nobles are now gone now.
They fled the butcher's knives of their comrades and the vengeful cleavers of their would be meals.
Only the accumulated wealth of all the region's nobility remains, hidden.
Under peeling floorboards, and dusty cellars just waiting for an enterprising treasure hunter hungry enough to find it.
Hey everybody, I'm Nick and I'm going to be running a trophy dark incursion called The Plantation.
And the Plantation is written by Nora Rose, and I'm excited to throw it your way.
Yeah, hey, I'm Jordan.
I've been heard around here on Dead Letter Bureau a time or two, but today I am playing Inda, the naturalist, as we delve into the plantation.
Hey guys, it's Charlie, and you've heard me on the Alien One-Shot, Alien slash Mothership One Shot.
I'm from the T List Podcast, this line is Sincure from the Knoll Project, and today I'm playing Thorum the Herbalist.
An herbalist and a naturalist walk into a bar.
Thormaninda, you stand on the edge of a forest.
You are on an old, less than traveled road, about to step into a new world, you might say.
What do you look like?
Thorum is a great man, strong man, build to pull bulls, rip trees from the ground, calloused hands, strong legs, dark hair and piercing stare.
Thorum doesn't shy away from brute work, for he knows that Inda would never be able to do what he does.
Inda Likewise, what does Thorum see?
is a punched man.
He walks with the weight of many upon his shoulders.
He is draped in the plants and the furs of the beasts he has seen.
They talk to him sometimes, sometimes he replies.
This day he stoops and he produces a small paw, which has a balm uh on its inside, which he rubs on his knee to alleviate the tires of the long.
You two enter the forest and walk among trees, short squat orchards, and when you feel the borderlands starting to end and the plantation grounds beginning,
You see the vanity on display of this area.
Here, in the distance, you see the nobles that remain, if one could call them such a thing.
Far away, it looks like the nobles have traded finery for a pig carcass.
You see five hunched over figures and a massive pig laying in the far distance.
game question.
And some of the time being out of character, how do you imagine this transitioning to us the players?
Are we in character right now?
Yeah.
I think you can be in character and then when it comes to like setting if you want to set more of the scene or a add a devil's bargain when we're rolling, then that's kind of the
outer character moments.
But even now you could be like, well, I think I would see this, right?
Or this is the detail I would pick up on.
You're welcome to bring that in whenever you want.
I think Ind is wary at seeing such a tremendous beast felled.
He is worried deeply that they are not honoring it in the way it deserves.
Thorum, what do you make of that?
Would I notice something special about them, considering my perception?
You're staring off into the distance and you can see they're wearing lace that could be silk, but it's hard to tell because there's clotted gore all over it, and they're huddled
over the dead pig like it's the last guest at some debauchery ridden ball.
It's disgusting, it's an aesthetic nightmare.
you see the shift from wealthy noble to feral trash right in front of you.
and they are gorging themselves.
You see them pulling haunch bits off of it and eating it.
Pity men, starving it seems that once fell.
Bees could fill feed a hundred.
They are greedy.
Yes.
Will they stop?
Or must we stop then?
I fear they will not stop until this beast is entirely consumed.
I fear even for the bones.
You approach.
There are too many to turn away with fists.
What do you propose?
Wide birth, I don't believe that we can take so many men at once.
As we traverse, keeping our distance, um stepping in silence to ensure that we are not noticed uh among the wild, I would like to wander through the edge of the forest and make
a small call for other things that feast, for beasts of the earth, for squirrels of the trees, for carrion birds.
For centipedes and things that crawl on the ground.
And I would like to urge them to follow me towards this bounty.
Okay.
So I'm gonna call this a risk roll, right?
You're putting your mind especially, um, and even your body at in danger.
So this will be our first roll.
What skills would give you a white dice?
Certainly my affinity for beasts, but also the way to walk in silence that is undisturbing of the natural order, a way that transmutes the energy of the forest into my very
footfall.
Yeah.
Okay, so you can add one light dice and you have to take a risk dice, the black one.
I will of offer you a devil's bargain and Thorum, you can as well.
My devil's bargain is that you can add a white dice no matter what though, there will be an unattended consequence to being able to move among the forest with grace.
You'll take the devil's bargain?
Thorum, do you want to add a devil's bargain or have anything?
No, I would just say it yeah, you could add the dice.
Uh however stealth would not be as easily dealt with, uh meaning everyone would make so much noise having this much of a company around us.
Yeah.
So two white dice and one black dice.
Roll them together.
Well you're looking for the highest and what color that highest is.
Um, is there any significance that two of my skills would apply, or am I maxed at one?
You're usually maxed at one and you use your skill with that and then the devil's bargain adds another.
Could be a understood.
Ah.
Five and a six on the white die, both outstripping the black.
Okay.
So you got a six which is a perfect success.
Um tell me what do you how do you bring this these creatures in to move on slowly?
I reach into my satchel and I bring out a melange of dried bits, things that I have kept from each dying creature that I have encountered, each plant that I have utilized in my
ritual, and I sprinkle them behind me.
They contain the concentrated scents that will attract each of these creatures to me and
As I progress forward, they gather in a swath, like a wake uh of writhing mass through the grasses behind me.
Okay.
Yeah, that's great.
So you have this writhing mass following you.
Thorum, how do you react to this?
Thorum would look at all the remains that uh Indah is li uh leaving behind.
The goblin, the beast, the boar, the cat.
Thorum would be surprised seeing this many uh that would first of all fit inside of Ind's pouches, and second be impressed of seeing all the stops he would pull just to get rid of
uh this many people.
In in my mind it is almost like do you know um like pork floss?
Like the dried uh s it it's kind of like that, but you can very clearly see that there are just different makeups of of different things in there, but it is like a a fish food for
the forest.
And your expectation is these things will end up turning on the nobles gorging themselves or just cover your
They will consume the meal that these n greedy nobles had ordained for themselves.
So you're sneaking along creating this trail with them.
Leading them towards like this is the promise of the feast to come.
That is what I am tantalizing them with.
It is come with me, I have a bigger kill for.
Okay.
Yeah.
As you both get closer to the nobles, you see that they still wear treasure all over their bodies.
They have necklaces, they have rings that are hanging off of strangely elongated fingers.
Some of them have skinny bodies but pot bellies with some strange change that's happened in their body.
And they have a lot of finery about them in gyms.
Do you think that you would try to take any of these treasures from the nobles as you've snuck up behind them, Dor?
Thorum has no need any more for glory or treasure.
Yeah.
Past them, you see an overturned stagecoach.
And it lies there like a broken clock.
It's gears the horses, the men.
They've spilled all over and are unmoving.
You see a footman hanging above the stagecoach as he's been charred, almost like a blackened pendula.
And more meals for my friends.
I am glad of this bounty.
Yeah, as you see this, the most delicious smell wafts into your nostrils, but is gone moments later.
Em could I use my knowledge of beasts and plants to try and place whatever creature or spice I have just smelled.
Yeah, yeah.
From where you're at, you would have to r really focus and hone and maybe pop your head out of the grass where you're hidden by these from these nobles.
Um, do you want to risk it?
What want to do is sick my wake upon the carcass and then observe freely.
Okay.
Yeah.
Let's let's do another risk roll for sicking it and to see if you can go unnoticed.
Thorum, anything you want to do?
Or are you just waiting?
I wouldn't be just waiting well, um yeah, spotting if anyone would if Inda wouldn't like catch the attention of someone.
Just to yeah, make sure that uh he gets back to safe.
Yeah, give me a risk roll.
Using the same naturalistic skill and the black dice for the risk.
Any devil's bargain for him, Thorum?
Not that I can think of, no.
I have a devil's bargain.
No matter what happens with the bugs, one of them will escape and see you.
Okay?
Go ahead, roll it out.
Vice is my understanding, one white, one dark.
Is it can you tell me more about what it means to succeed or fail?
Six is a success exactly as you described, and four and five are a success with a complication, and the rest are failures to different degrees.
Up uh a four on the wait dates.
Great.
So you succeed, but there's a complication.
I'm gonna throw this to Thorum.
What do you think the complication would be as he's sicking these critters on this group?
And if you don't have one, that's fine.
Um like he's throwing stuff is what that what I'm understanding.
He's
They're they've been trailing behind him behind this food, for lack of a better word or bait, and now he's finally letting them loose to go up and eat the pig carcass out from
under the nobles.
Um, some of them would probably have crawled next to Thorum and um it would disgust him in some way and he would have made like a slight noise like ah as a surprise.
Okay, perfect.
You see them go forward.
A what's an animal that you would despise, Thorum, that crawls over your hand as you're hunched down in the grass?
Um a centipede.
Okay, for sure.
Maybe you set your hand on the centipede and it crawls out and then over your hand and you startle.
And as these things run up and start consuming everything on that hill, you see two of the nobles fall off and look towards you, Thorum, and they are aghast at their food is being
eaten.
And they're like, It was ours, it was ours, it was rightfully ours.
We killed it.
And then
They look up and look to you, Thorum.
Are these your creatures yours?
Yes, for you do not own nature.
Yeah.
So you see them come s two of them running straight at you both.
They have no weapons.
They're quite distraught looking.
They have long nails that are covered in blood and gore, and there's small bits of flesh down their arm as they've been digging out into this pig.
And they stumble towards you almost like a faster-moving zombie.
give you an option to do anything you would like.
Otherwise I've got a a plan in my back pocket.
Thorum does have sickles, as he is an herbalist, and also an affinity for dueling as he is an errant knight, will have no problem in facing off against heretics of nature.
Okay, so you're going to fight them head on with your sickle and duel there are two of them.
Inda, there is a thing called the help roll if you wanted to do it.
And what you do is you essentially roll twice, but it's always with another dark dice.
Does that make sense?
They roll twice.
So Thorum would roll twice.
But you have to expose yourself to danger, Inda.
So you would describe how you're exposing yourself to danger.
And then aid them.
Okay.
Um, I mean, I'm going to ask you first if you want help.
I don't know enough about the consequences of what you're getting yourself into to know if that is a big deal or a small deal.
I'm happy to help.
I would I'm essentially your bodyguard man.
So and helper.
Uh I would probably use you to say just in case like they get in my back or trying to try anything special that would uh blindside me or flank me or whatever.
Okay.
So it sounds like help help would be appreciated.
Yes.
Okay.
As they are running towards Thorum, I have been stooped down uh gathering a suitable handful of rocks.
Uh and from the end of my staff there is a uh long looped piece of leather, and I will deposit a fist-sized rock into it, and I will give it a swing, swing, swing, and as they
are
Making their way towards him, I will send it flying, simply to make contact uh with the one that is lagging behind.
Right.
So, um, you just need to roll me one light die, Inda, and then I got I got the roll wrong, basically.
All you do is roll one light die, tell us the number, and then Thorum does their roll.
And I'm going to offer a devil's bargain as a part of this, but go ahead and give me that role, Inda.
Okay.
So success with a complication.
A devil's bargain, Thorum, is that you will, no matter what happens, success or not, you will kill one of them.
But the other one will flee.
No, they both die right now.
Okay, no devil's bargain.
So one light die and one dark die.
Yeah.
and I assume you have to kind of like okay if that is a an acceptable thing, right?
Sure.
Okay.
my devil's bargain would be that my shot was pretty fucking good and it collapses the temple of the one that I hit.
Um, but the other one makes purchase in a grave way against.
Okay, so you get to h knock out one guy, but the next guy has a um leg up from me?
He guarantees to wound you you will take damage from him.
He will wound you, and then you can finish him off however you see fit, but you won't walk away unscathed.
Mm.
And I'll roll a condition for whatever that is, and then you'll just get a random condition if you want to take the double's bargain.
This is so good.
Uh sure, let's go for theme.
Let's go.
Okay.
So one extra light die.
So two light and one dark.
Oof, okay.
That was a one and the light die, and a six on the light die outweighing the dark die.
A
A hidden component of the help is that if the helper's light dye matches the dark dye or is under it, then they'll gain a ruin.
Can you roll me a d6, Jordan?
A four.
Okay.
Your mouth abruptly fills with a s like a thick saliva, but it also feels dry as the desert in a blink of an eye.
Like there's just something strange about your taste buds right now.
And you gain that condition along with a ruin.
Thorum, you so sorry, your highest was a four.
Or sorry, your highest was a six.
Perfect success.
Okay, so you see a rock come through and hit one of them, brain them, their eye goes slack in front of you as you just see the mental capacity fall away from them as they slam into
the ground.
But as that's happening, this next one comes in and rakes down.
onto your chest and tears some skin off of your chest, but you're able to quickly dispatch them with your sickle.
You can describe that, and then I will need a condition roll from you, just a D6.
Okay.
Um so they go and scratch me and like tear off a bit of uh skin yeah, flesh around uh along with it.
Thorum will quickly shove them back and shove the sickle in their neck side to side and just pull Yank towards him, leaving a curtain of blood echo um bleeding through their
entire shirt and fall to the floor.
Go ahead and give me a D6 for Okay, let me get a different table.
The redness from where they gouged into your skin, it starts to feel hot.
And there's this wave of heat that emanates from that part of your body as if you were being cooked from there.
And there's a strange smell that comes from the wound, and it kind of smells good.
And
This mound of critters is consuming this pig and three of the other nobles that did not have a chance to break off and try to attack.
Um they are screaming in the background, but their cries are starting to be deafened deafened.
Sorry.
Their cries are starting to be deafened by bugs crawling into their mouths and down their throat.
And it's not too disturbing um for the natural wildlife.
perhaps once these two have been dispatched, I would like to go and mm look at the iconography uh amongst their treasures.
I would like to see if I can place any sort of affinity beyond just their desire for wealth.
And uh in my time uh on the long road.
I have seen many things that people have come to worship and I would like to use my knowledge of saints to see if I can glean anything about
Yeah, roll one light dice.
You're not putting yourself at risk for this.
Yeah.
So you look at a lot of it, and it does seem it I guess what you can see even with a failure is the superficiality of it all.
Like it is fine, but there's no craftsmanship to it.
It is fine for the sake of being fine.
You think this is wealth for the sake of wealth.
This is shop.
Exactly.
Yes, it's Golschlager.
And it communicates that, but with a, you know, a keen eye, you can tell that there was no art to it.
Indeed.
That makes you as you're digging through this, what's what desperation and hunger has your background forced you to suffer?
Background um indicates that I have been on a trail for a long time.
A trail which has many times gone dry, which has at many times um looked as though there was no path to follow at all.
The idea that failure had set in the mind uh before it was realized in the physical world.
This idea that I yearn unendingly for the right to prove myself worthy and that that may never find a way an appropriate way to be sated.
Yeah, your pride, maybe even vanity, has never been fully or ne never felt fully fed.
Thorum.
Thorm has forgotten the ways of uh his noble ways as a previous knight, now removed from the kingdom he once served.
Thorm has rejected all he was, all he would have ever been, and decided to embrace the wild and hunger was the first thing on the list is to survive at all costs.
Yeah.
So you forsaking your in an entire life in the past obviously comes with hunger, and you experience that literally, not just metaphorically.
Well, do our treasure hunters continue on to the second ring and trek toward the famed manor house?
Um Thorum will um kneel down unto the nobles being eaten by the carrions, the crows, the centipedes, worms, the beetles, and will throw dirt on them slightly as their eyes close,
say return now to the root of things.
Who wore your names like armor?
Let the crows strip title from bone, let the worms unknow your lineage.
We did not hate you, we harvested you, as we harvest all things in their past seasons.
May the soil remember what the court forgot and flesh is just slow earth, and pride a last thing to decompose.
Go down, well, feed something honest.
There you go.
They're yes, and that's what they do.
There is nothing more honest than a single-minded pile of animals and carry on consuming something.
I think as I am watching this part of the natural cycle uh unfold, I see this treasure which is wholly unnatural, and I would take off a piece a brooch that I quite like.
I would dig a small divot into the earth, I would deposit it there, give it one last look and say, I wonder what you will grow as I cover it.
Cool.
Very good.
In the distance, you hear a small pack, maybe starving hounds, snarling and snapping at each other.
Do you continue on?
The orchards and forest make way for what looks to be an overgrown irrigated rice field where the rice has grown too tall and is much taller than any rice patties you've seen
over your own heads, in fact.
The fields look like a golden sea, and they don't wave, they just stand there erect.
Each stalk is almost like a yellow spear, and the water below it is brackish mirror reflecting the sky above, which is bright and too hot.
The humidity starts to come up from the soil as you step in, and the heat becomes a physical presence.
It's a ghost that's hanging over your shoulders and creeping down your chest in the form of sweat.
navigation is nearly impossible, but you do see the beginnings of a hill with a manor on it in the far distance that you can step towards.
does not stop to change his form.
It is malleable and intentionally so.
He peels back uh the bare paws that are draped over his shoulders, and rolls them down his back as they become a belt, his exterior flowing and shaping with him like the natural
world.
He sweats, because that is what men do.
Yeah.
Thorum, as you see Inda pulling this down, you look to the left, maybe, or the right, and Inda's gone.
Inda, you turn about, and Thorum is gone.
Uh you've both been separated.
And just as you realize that, it's almost like the shadows of the stalks bend into strange three fingered hands, too thick and one thumb type.
Finger and they grasp towards your legs where you feel the hair on your legs being pulled towards them, but not a physical touch.
The shadows suggest that they're not hunting you, but they're hurting you as you feel a pull in certain directions passing these stalks.
What do you do?
We'll pause for a moment and see if these stocks mm react less favorably.
If I am not to disregard their direction, but simply not heed any direction for a moment.
Yeah, they pull you to your left consistently.
And when you say poll, do they give more than an indication?
Am I still left to my own devices to pursue that path?
Go ahead and roll.
Put your mind at risk considering this.
So a white and a dark unless and Thorum, do you have a devil's bargain for Inda?
Okay.
I no, I can't think of one.
Right.
I is the white dye always the skill or am I able to volunteer another skill that I am intending to
Yeah, volunteer skill.
In fact I you should do that first.
Otherwise it's just a black die.
My bad.
Yeah.
Yeah, no worries.
Uh no worries.
Please cut that.
Um yes, I believe that in that moment of taking pause, I am trying to listen to the stillness um that would exist if I were not here.
I am imagining the world without me as I have done many times.
And I am using that as a compass to try and orient myself towards the position of Thor.
Awesome.
I love it.
No devil's bargain for me, but I have some good complications.
Great, thank you.
I for one am excited anything on your side, or should I three on the white.
Okay, what's your dark die?
Okay.
So yeah, you fail and making yourself become nothing.
Almost disorients you where you absolutely lose your bearings and you're maybe even spin around without knowing it.
And the only thing you have left is the pole of the shadows and that hair on your body prickling in one direction.
Okay.
Thorum.
Big strong Thorum.
Yeah.
Do you submit to the shadows pole?
Or how how would you find Inda in
as he disappears uh from his v as Inda disappears from uh Thorm's vision, uh see the shadow pulls at his legs, say, let go of me, foul creatures.
Nothing pulls me away anymore.
The sin of men is above below me now.
Uh will try and focus his eyes and chew a plant that will first of all adjust his vision, temperature, or whatever.
like is ailing him right now from the scratch of the previous guy that uh what he did to him and if it can help and if it can remove some of the infection and clear his vision
somehow.
A coca leaf.
Yeah?
Making yourself more alert, right?
Yeah, go ahead and give me a dark die and a light die.
And if there's a devil's bargain from Enda, um you might add another light die.
Do you have a devil's bargain, Inda?
Okay.
No matter what, you will be addicted to that leaf.
that doesn't sound good.
Um, yeah, okay.
Yes, I hunger.
Ooh, okay, uh three and three on the light and a six on the dark die.
Okay, add a ruin for that six.
Okay.
And then give me a D6 for a condition.
Your cut, as you're shoving stuff in it, you see faint lines of what looks to be ink in your bloodstream appear across the cuts.
And they go across your chest and down your haunches and up your neck.
And they create it almost an illustration of a tattoo on your body.
And they are cuts of your own meat.
You see where your breast would be harvested as a cut.
You see one appear on your thigh where your thighs would be harvested, were you to be in the presence of a goddamn good butcher.
And this is all over your body now except for your face.
But you are alert.
You are addicted, and you ignore these shadowy things pulling towards you, and you go the complete opposite direction and walk into Inda.
And Inda, you feel Thorum's heavy figure step right behind you.
And as that happens, you hear a maddening, unending buzzing of flies far in the distance.
Found you.
We never stray away from our from one another.
It would serve me well to remember this, for a moment there I had thought I lost you.
What do you see ahead?
Yeah, that is a good question.
You see the house and you're next to a raised up road or the remnants of a road.
It's eroded, and next to this eroded road, eroded road, um, there are withered willow trees stripped of their bark and charred with flame.
And on one of the trees, there's a corpse nailed to it.
it long wise feet nailed together and hands nailed together above its his head, and it looks like they've been gnawed on.
devil's house, perhaps.
From what I'm seeing, they don't take kindly to strangers.
Yeah.
As you're reflecting on that, you also notice that before it was not on the skin was flayed off of him, and it's in dried almost like sandpapery piles at his feet.
And this go ahead, Inda.
Far away is this figure?
Pull open some of the rice patties and it's a good um thirty feet across the road.
I would like to inspect the gnawing to see what manner of beast could have done this or if it is by human jaw.
Would you risk your sanity for that investigation?
No, I think I would instead cast my eyes to the ground and look for the marks of beasts that would have perpetrated.
You yeah, that's great.
And based on your skills you're able to do that as a naturalist.
The three fingered shadows resonate.
You see human fingers in that, but almost like they're bound together in a strange way and the thumb is pushing down.
And as I am looking at the patterns on the ground beneath this figure, even though the rice patties stand to my sides, that is what it hearkens Thus must we burn it all?
Yeah, as you're reflecting on that, there is a question that comes to both of your minds seeing this person flayed and eaten potentially by these sick nobles in the area.
What do you think of those who jealously hoard riches while others toil in poverty?
I think we essentially saw it played out with the pig five feasting on what could feed thousand the thousands should eat.
Thorm, what do you think of those who jealously hoard riches while others toil?
Sinful acts such as greed and gluttony should always be punished, either by fire or iron.
So maybe you do burn it down.
It's quite wet though.
S from this vantage point in this clearing next to this tree, the rice paddy in front of you, you can take the road up to the big house that you see slightly raised on a hill.
Is there any other way to
Your gain went way up.
Yeah, go.
Better two.
Maybe m split the difference, yes.
I should very much not like to be in the company of these reeds any longer.
I should very much like to have more company than just the sun on my back.
Is there another way to approach on the far side of the road?
Yeah, you can there is a meadow of these willow trees that you can hug and stay in the shadow of the entire way up to the house.
I should like to dance between their branches.
You dance between their branches as Thorum trounces a bit.
Subt more subtler, come on.
Just kidding.
Not lunk.
You see this big house, and you're getting closer, and it rises like a bleached skull from the hillside.
And there are ivory columns, but they're johda stained, and there's soot of a thousand fires and a never-warmed heart surrounding the entire thing.
Uh it's honestly a Baroque monstrosity.
It's the architecture is of arrogance.
And your guess is the inside um is the same, but you approach the house.
What manner of entrances look as though they have been used as such, and which perhaps have not.
You do a cursory perimeter, and both you and Thorum see that there's no entrance to a cellar, there's no secret entrance, there's no smaller doors, there's just two grand
entryways, one in the front and one in the back, pointing toward that arrogance.
And as far as well traveled, um both look pretty destitute, but well worn.
Thorum.
You were my compass earlier, and I should trust in you again.
Would you like the front, the back, or shall we carve another pack?
Now this is a choice between entering through the front, through the back, or finding another way around, right?
Mm-hmm.
Make us one.
Seems the devil will await us no matter where we would go.
I believe we shouldn't forge our own entry.
Yeah.
You can forge your own entry.
Um, as you've looked at both entrances, you see where gold finery was inladed into marble and wood but has long since been stripped out.
There have been hunters here before it seems, and any jewels inset into fixtures have been pried um from the outside.
You indicated that there was no access to a cellar.
Does the foundation and the structure of the building give any indication that there is a cellar?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Something like this would have to store food somewhere and it's so humid and hot above ground any person in their right mind architecturally would dig down.
And so will I.
I will use my ritual, clay, to dig through the stonework as though it were earth.
Yeah.
So you dig down and create a tunnel to uh under the house.
Okay.
So you will gain a ruin by using your ritual and you create a tunnel under ground to the cellar.
Yeah, would you like a little bit more theatricality to it?
You mentioned maybe it should be a big scene is all.
I was trying to give it the gravity that it that a ritual needs.
It's up to you.
Like I think that's just fine to use it architecturally, right?
The tunnel is steep and down, and it comes out on a high wall where you have to jump down about six feet into the cellar.
The cellar's pitch dark.
Do you drop in?
I
put my stave down as far as it will go, leaning out of the hole until it touches the earth, and then I will if it feels solid, then I will use it to slow my fall as I descend.
Yeah.
You're able to descend Thorum, what are you doing?
Hoppin' in after him?
Yeah, correct.
My niece can take it.
You fall down and it's pitch black.
You have nothing but darkness in front of you.
There's no object, this is just like the night.
I will place my hand over Thoram's mouth and over his nose, and we will for a short time cease to breathe as we rest in the silence and detect if there is anything else in here
with us.
Yeah.
That's your perception skill, right?
Silence, okay.
Yeah, give me
I would have perception at that moment, yeah.
Okay.
I won't have it be a a help roll, just uh both of you roll a light dice for that.
Beautiful.
Four.
Okay.
So your silence is absolute and holding Thorm's mouth quiets the room for him to perceive.
And he perceives not sound, but smell.
There is the smell of iron, almost like blood.
But also of copper and gold, like the smell of coinage.
And it attacks that same hunger that you felt earlier.
Like your stomach starts to growl.
And as you're thinking about that hunger, what do you do with the riches that you get from here?
Like what will you do with them?
Leave them, or actually no, we will take some, only for necessities.
What I only require is enough for us, enough for some, and a weapon to defend me and my master a bit better.
He should abore money in all forms.
That is my teaching, that is my feeling, and yet I also feel a tie to my family, a family that has, for all intents and purposes, cast me out.
They will die alone as I will, if I am not to restore something capable of harbouring our legacy.
It pains me, but I would not
to turn aside all these riches I would carry back what is required to restore my house to subsistence.
You sit in this darkness with that smell lingering.
Do you try to alight anything?
Do you try to create light?
Or do you crawl back out to where you know the sun is starting to set?
I I do have phosphorescent plants which I essentially rub very hard on my hands and can rub on surfaces, wooden uh pillars and such, so that it would not necessarily illuminate
the entirety of the place, but at least give us pinpoints and we would see uh slightly where we are.
Yeah.
You do this and you realize the cellar is massive, and you step over piles of things that are both squishy and solid, you kick through piles of gold, you hear the change around,
and you continue rubbing these plants around the perimeter of the whole thing, and you see a line of where Thorum's hand has splayed.
this pasty plant.
And you see the faint glow of things.
There are piles of strange refuse and goods.
There are riches.
You see small glints off of gemstones and diamonds.
And to the far end of the room away from you, Thorum, eh?
Or in Inda you see Thorum walk behind just a large circular object, and then it slowly gets backlit by the phosphorescence.
And it almost looks like a a giant bowl or something.
Like massive, like larger than Thorum.
And you have this lit up in front of you.
and as you're standing there, you do start to hear something.
You hear a strange barking, squealing sound from the tunnel that you dug.
As I am encountering these riches uh upon the ground, I understand that part of them is what I seek here.
And yet it would be wrong for me to dine before the earth has had her fill, and I should like to tithe them back into the soil.
I would like to turn them back into ore, back into embedded stone, and I would like to try and recoup.
A ruin in exchange for desecrating this treasure.
To recoup a ruin you have to betray another hunter in some way.
So yeah, in the act in the forests interests it says e.g.
destroy treasure, prevent rituals, sabotage fellow treasure hunters.
Sure.
Okay.
Yeah.
You can you can destroy some treasure here.
Yeah, I'm not this is a quick start guide.
I don't know how the rules go, but it seems like maybe if we're both here for treasure and I go, Ah yeah, but not this treasure, then someone might be incensed by that, right?
There is a sort of betrayal there, I guess.
I don't know.
Thorum, to do this, you think that you need Thorum's sickles to carve your ritual into the ground.
Are you going to take his sickle?
I will not take it, student, but I will ask.
Uh oblige uh immediately for sure.
Yes, yes, take them, take them.
Roll a light die.
Is it below your current run?
Surely it must if I am attempting this.
Yes.
So you can reduce your ruin by one.
And how do you destroy this sickle and start to desecrate this treasure?
I use the sickle as an example.
I use it to show these coins the memory of the earth to which they once belonged.
I take its finery and I compact it into my hands, and at the end it is scarcely more than an ingot, unrecognizable from its previous form, which I hope the others to become.
As you're doing that, it's noisy, you're pulling treasure in, the sound is echoing through the cellar.
Um, Thorum, you hear footsteps around you and treasure being rifled through in this pitch black cellar, and you even hear something drop down from the hole that Inda made.
And for a second, you see a s flash and
There's a light throughout everything.
And then a torch lights up right next to the tunnel that was made.
And you see the strange thing standing there with a torch with strange humanoid fingers grasping right below the fire.
Looks like two human fingers bound by some sort of twine together to almost make like a hoof with a thumb, and they're pallid and hairless.
And they're massive, like heaving lard of a figure.
It ripples in the torchlight, and its skin is stretched and it's almost translucent to its screaming point.
It's all stretch mark.
And there's no distinguishing factor between human and hog when you look at this thing.
The face is so overweight and wrought with fat.
It almost looks like it has a pig snout as the nose has been curled upward and it sits there breathing and snorting.
And the torchlight also lights up one of those same things, but crawling, almost like rolling through the treasure, and it's sniffing around and has found looks to be dried
flesh in a pile and is shoving it into his mouth.
And some walk upright and some.
Have their bellies swinging and scratching on the cellar floor and the trash and refuse.
And then you notice that they're all holding cleavers.
And some of them have butcher hooks.
And they start to convene on your location.
What do you guys do?
What other egresses do we have out of the cellar in the light now?
By the cauldron you saw a staircase leading out across the room.
You could flee or try to make a run for it.
These things don't seem that fast on first glance.
That is my instinct, which I will communicate to Thoram with a series of well intentioned glances, but my glances are not certain, and I seek your opinion as well, that is evident
on my face.
How many are there?
A lot?
Disciples of the unhallowed mouth, however easily dealt with, they are too numerous.
We must indeed make a run for it.
Yes, I think we I think we will move with haste and fell any sort of obstacles um a bookshelf, a larder that is holding what used to be dried goods.
Fell them such that this path behind the cauldron is as untreadable as
as possible for these lumbering hulks.
And if that fails I will well first find one weapon in the stockpile of whatever we can run across and uh make it mine.
Who among you is the slowest?
It is I.
Thorm, would you sacrifice Inda to survive?
You are trying to run away and knock things over, um, obviously putting yourself at risk in this chase.
Um you will be taking a dark die, both of you.
What of your skills or even rituals would there be around to use a light die?
I would duel uh these creatures if I if they get too close for
sure.
Okay.
That's great.
Yes, I think I would allow Thorum to be the primary feller of things.
He is faster, he is stronger, he is going to m make better use of that time than I and between each of those I would like to hide behind his form and pass as quietly as I can
such that all attention is on him using my silence.
In this situation, Inda, do you have a devil's bargain for Thorum dueling these things?
And Thorum, do you have a devil's bargain for Inda and trying to stay silent and hide from them behind you?
Have a devil's bargain for you.
You are capable, but they are numerous.
And you are able to fend them off from the front, but one interposes itself between myself and yourself with the exit behind me.
Okay, so you put Inda at risk.
I have a devil's bargain for you, Thorum, as well.
You can choose.
Um mine is that you grow to see little difference between Inda and these nobles of the land.
Like you have been protecting Inda, and all Inda wants to do is take this wealth back and reclaim a house.
Like how is that any different than these gluttonous, sick, depraved fools?
Okay, I like that.
That'll take in the you okay, so you're trying to you're trying to get away from them as I take the aggro, commonly known.
If this doesn't succeed, they turn to you instead.
You take that bargainenda?
All right, come on.
Come on.
Rule it out, Thorum.
Do you do you have a uh sorry, Nick, do you have a devil's bargain for me?
Yeah, it would be so easy to push Thorum over and walk over him and escape up the stairwell.
Um which you could do regardless, and any failure on your roll all goes to Thorum, and you're able to escape.
Any success also goes to Thorum.
Not a chance.
Let the natural order stand.
All right, roll it out, guys.
All right.
Six on my light die, three on the dark die.
Great.
Inda?
Four on my dark die, three on my light.
Okay.
So your dark die is your highest.
Okay.
And but it's below your current ruin, right?
Or is it at your current?
It is my current ruin.
I look at something real quick.
Uh, equal to Okay, only if it's higher.
Okay, you're good.
Thorum, how do you square up and just knock these pig things out of the way and be on them as Inda is able to stand at your back and let you charge this path forward, slowly
building resentment up in you about
Um, Thorum would have seen something stick out of a pile of gold, uh something with a handle, and something with a handle is better than no handle at all.
Uh will pull out a hatchet, uh encrusted in jewels, ruins.
To him it doesn't matter, it's still something with a sharp edge that'll drive the darkness back.
He will swing on multiple of them.
as well as kick anything that could fall onto them.
And once he gathers the torch of one of them, we'll drive use that as well to back them away.
Possibly burning one, lighting the entire room at the same time, while at um harbouring some form of resentment towards Indah.
Inda, how are you crouched up behind
Is perhaps with even less thought for his movements than that.
I move with all the speed I can muster, which is not much, and I require him to keep pace with me.
I endanger myself multiple times, trying to stride as quickly as I can, and cause him to abandon a more defensible position.
On multiple occasions putting himself at risk.
Yeah.
I mean the complication that you would have is built into that, right?
Like he it isn't like defensible where he's at.
He's surrounded.
Um, but he is able to pull it out.
I will say another complication is he knocks one of the things down and the torch from that pig rolls under the cauldron and a fire emits from below it.
And the entire room is illuminated.
And you see that some of the things you've been stepping on are wriggling huge rope-sized maggots.
And there is fly-choked flayed skin suspended from rafters above you.
And it's conjuring scenes of obscene laundry.
And in the center of the room, off to the side, that
Giant pit that was just litten erupts with grease and you see fat start to boil almost immediately and black soot rises from it.
It looks like a giant cook pot.
And you see the edge of it.
It's just molten gold that's dribbled off and dried on the side, and you feel the heat just start wafting towards you.
You see all that gold there.
Would you risk searing your flesh for a hand at that gold?
As these pigmen are now covering their eyes with this illuminated cook pot down here.
I would not.
I would recall a teaching, a sonnet of sorts, a lesson for Thorum in this moment.
For he thought it wise to bring some level of light into this place, but I will remind him that sometimes the dark is just doing its job.
It tells us that is why the dark is there, so you don't have to see what you can't bear, the lion's share.
That's what it is.
You are able to get to it's a massive staircase.
This cellar is huge and your light has or the light of the cauldron has illuminated the entire thing and it's already boiling.
There is this unnatural heat to it as it strikes up.
And coming down from the stairs, you see a large matronly figure.
And the light starts to bend around it as she comes out of the shadow.
She's twice your height, probably twenty-five times your weight, and her mask is or her face is full of compassion and love.
Her eyes are twin pits of ancient and bottomless love and hunger.
And as she steps down, you see the large fat of six
Breasts hanging from her chest and a lard-ridden stomach wobble, and she steps down and moves closer to the bottom of the stairs where you're standing, and her strange cloven
hooves step down onto some of the gold, and her weight almost grinds it to nothing and flattens the gold into paper thin golden filigree.
She walks by you, looks down at you with
Gives you a beautiful smile and steps over to the cauldron and pulls a giant ladle encrusted with gems and gives it one t swirl and it erupts with a smell.
Thinking of your drive.
That smell is a smell of fulfillment of your drive.
What does that smell remind you of?
Fittingly coming out of a cauldron, it reminds me of the meals at a long table in my home.
The spice that, with all my years of walking the earth, I still cannot place.
A tinge of home where I am no longer welcome, but I could be.
As you reflect on that, you hear her, a sweet, sweet voice in your head.
And the voice tells you your family is holding you.
You're in a massive hall.
It's your old, old manor, but inlaid with gold, riches unconceivable to you before now.
And you're sitting there with the love of your family as they're holding you.
It is a festival in your home.
There is a uh
Massive, massive tree up, decorated, and there's nothing but warmth for you as you have the admiration of your family to go along with the riches.
And she asks you, how much meat is this worth to you?
Am I a part of my vision still?
In front of me, across this massive banquet table, which, in the way that a dream can convey where you are without resembling every aspect of it, I know this to be my home,
even though it does not look like the home that I left.
The table extends into the horizon with people that I have never met, but I yearn to know.
And in front of each of them a set of finery, gold and porcelain.
But in front of myself there is only a cup, a cup of wood, and I raise it as a toast.
And as I do, I look at this mother in her face, and I say all you have to give, and I will cast bottle.
And I will force her spirit into my cup.
it.
We'll pause right there and go to Thorum.
Thorum, what does the fulfillment of your drives smell like and remind you of?
Damn.
The
Drive is special though 'cause it's like smell, like what um
You can just tell me like what is the fulfillment look like and we can come up with a smell in that.
The drive is pay the toll of the Emerald Bridge, like tolls whatever it needs to be.
The Emerald Bridge is your key to the afterlife.
Yeah.
Like some people die and see darkness.
The Emerald Bridge will take you to the heavens.
Mm-hmm.
Does your heaven smell like?
Okay.
Fields of wheat, um firewood, peace.
You imagine yourself in a quaint cabin with your full knights regalia back and restored, and you have that peace.
And in your head, she asks you, how much meat and blood would you pay for this?
Thorum will have uh his axe that he recently acquired and will axe his chest with it.
My heart.
Like you're cutting yourself?
Yeah, well yeah.
Well would like i on his armor, obviously, but if if it hits his flesh then my yeah, sh so be it.
Um but he will axe his enti his chest and say my heart.
Yeah.
You force the spirit into your cup, Inda.
What do you do from there?
You do after a toast, you drink.
Yeah, you like the entire thing.
Yeah.
You drink, give me a ruin roll.
Thor.
Okay.
Thorum, you don't have to give me a ruin roll, but you didn't drink the the pig woman.
You drink it and you gain a ruin.
Yeah.
Give me another D6 to see what condition you take.
As you drink this, your mouth and nose slowly start to change and form.
into a snout of a pig.
You oink and Thorum, you see Inda's face elongate and squeal in a almost like this screaming human guttural whine.
And it echoes through the chamber and all the other pig people cower.
And you see her lift Inda off the ground.
Inda, you have five ruin, correct?
Okay.
How much ruin do you have, Thorum?
Okay.
Thorum, she's holding Inda up almost like in a loving embrace, as Ind has drank her of her spirit.
Do you do anything, Thorum?
High is you from me?
About six feet up.
Thorum will not let anyone fall to sin any more.
He will jump, extend his arm and cleave Inda's head if he can.
Yeah.
Okay.
Go ahead, definitely a risk roll, and then you can use your duel as well.
I'd like to help.
Okay.
Yeah.
So how would you help?
Yes.
Well, I this entire act was in aid of Thorum.
I saw the vision that I thought that I wanted, but it was tainted.
Tainted with the gold that I would take from this place.
And as my student I understand what vision he saw.
A noble one.
One that he deserves.
I drank for him.
Beautiful.
Okay, give me your d6 vs Inda.
Hey.
Thorum, devil's bargain.
You will hit something, no matter what.
And when you do, you will either kill Inda or yourself, depending on what you hit, and we'll do a 50-50 coin flip on that.
Do you want to put yourself at risk to ensure that you kill Inda?
Yeah.
Roll it out.
Oop.
Okay, that's one.
Uh pff double one on the light die, three on the dark die.
Failure across the board.
Give yourself a ruin?
You're going to hit her.
Tell me what you do.
I jump to cleave Inda's head and she's holding him right.
And as I swing to catch him, he moves, making her arm twist and I will hit and break one of her elbows.
Your axe is embedded in her lardy arm, and she's holding Ind up.
And as a part of the devil's bargain, give me one second.
She holds Inda up in front of you and looks down at you almost disappointed.
And you feel a sense of disappointing somebody like your grandmother with this look.
And she pulls out the ladle of gold and uses her fingers to open Inda's mouth and
Pours molten hot gold down Inda's gullet.
And you see Inda boiling from the inside and steam erupting from his pig-like snout.
And she holds him up and swings him almost drying.
And then sticks her other hand into Inda's mouth and splits him in half and is holding up a beautiful gold intestinal track from the throat to the stomach.
And sets it down at your feet.
Can you give me a rune roll, Thorum?
I
The the player is rolling ruin at this point.
Um, okay.
Yeah, why didn't you offer us a trigger warning?
Yeah.
What?
Six on the ruin roll.
Okay.
What's your ruin at now?
Three.
Okay.
She gives you this gold and once again implores, how much meat and blood would you give for everything?
Will you hunt for me?
Will you be my knight?
Will hunt my own way.
I am no one's knight.
No longer.
You are an icon of sin, and sin must be
Purged.
Yeah, are you choosing to fight or trying to run away?
What do you what action do you take with this proclamation?
This woman has de well woman has defiled not only us in vision but in the physical.
There is no forgiveness for this, so he will kill or die trying.
Yeah.
Don your axe and give me some rolls, and if you have any devil's bargain from the grave enda, please.
Yes.
you have those lines on your own self that you perceive.
Like a butcher's outline, telling you where a precise strike would cleave true.
And you see a line pace between her cloven fingers and down her arm.
and you think that
To strike there would be more potent than any of her other lard bearing uh locations.
However, it would not be a lethal blow.
Obviously.
Yeah, you can take that bargain.
Okay, roll it out.
Two white, one dark.
Kissy kissy.
Yeah, my wife just came back from work and just figured Yes.
Oh, nice.
Cool.
Uh six on the light die, five on the dark die.
Okay, you are able to wound her and cut down her arm, and it is a uh heart-wrenchingly loud screech that she emits, and she screams and it shakes the walls.
The other pigmen cover their ears and roll around like hogs in mud, but it's trash and gold and skin.
Um, and she does look back down at you and
Comes down with a claw and holds you up.
She grabs the back of your neck and pulls you into one of her teats and uses one of her hands and forces you your sh and f sorry, uses one of her hands to open your mouth and
forces you onto her teeth to suckle and holds your head there and you cannot breathe.
What is your last few moments on this earth look like?
Or sorry.
What do the last few moments you spend alive on this thing's teet look like?
As he suffocates to death.
Um Yeah, exactly.
We'll actually proceed to bite and to see if like it would do anything.
Like there's no way out of this, right, Nick?
Yeah, okay, yeah.
No, no, I'm j I'm just confirming because this changes stuff.
Uh I will bite, uh, but instead of just skin, now it's blood.
suffocating me, drowning me at the same time.
Um and in these last moments of air, I do whisper final stuff t uh final words to make me comfort me, I guess in my way in darkness.
I know you're here.
You are always here.
I felt you in the ink when I signed the maps.
I felt you in the water after.
I don't ask for forgiveness.
I was never yours to give.
I ask only this.
Let the land remember the shape of me, as a womb that tried to close itself, not a good man, but a man who stopped.
The elder at the well, I never learned their name.
That's the thing I carry into the dark, not the surveys, not the village.
Her name, but I never asked.
I give back what I could, root by root, body by body was never enough.
It was never going to be enough.
I knew that.
I kept going anyway.
That's all I have.
It's everything I have.
Voreth, the unhallowed mouth.
You do not get this death.
This ground is not yours.
I'm returning myself to something older than your hunger.
Eat the map, for I am going back to the soil, and will curdle and gasp for air, but it's not coming, and just will feel this moment of peace somewhat as he slowly co closes his
eyes and
Into the darkness he goes.
Both the blood and her milk spill into your mouth, and the milk is almost like cottage cheese.
It is thick and has curds in it, and it tastes sweet, tastes like milk, and it gives you this warm sense of relief as it smothers you.
And in front of you you see a large emerald bridge and light blue.
Cast down upon it, and as you step forward to the Emerald Bridge, it collapses below your feet, and you are sucked into darkness and no longer exist.
And in the cellar she casts your body into the cauldron and mix you into the molten, and you are gone.