Howdy, friends. I am stealing a line from my guest, Michael Cross. Howdy, friends, and welcome to one of our teaser trailer interviews of Campaign 3 and the characters and the cast and the players. And I am joined by the demigod of Foley, Michael Cross.

Hey, Brook.

It's good to see you.

I am so excited about this campaign.

What excites you the most?

You're dming.

Oh, that's very, very sweet. That's very sweet.

I think also the fact that we're returning to our roots.

Yes.

And we're going back to the Americana.

Yes.

Western, late 19th century type of feel to it. So, yeah, the characters, I think, are going to be able to recognize some of the archetypes from some of the old west, as well as D and D. Yeah, 100%.

100%. In campaign one, we were out amongst the frontier mostly doing some things. Here we are in one of the 1880 ish, 1890 ish, turn of the century city.

Kind of a steampunk feel, A little steampunk vibe.

We've got some technology that's been developed a little bit, but don't be surprised if that automaton train or that steampunk train unloads some aurochs.

I love that Victorian era feel.

Yes, yes, yes. You know, a London and Chicago mashup or a London and Kansas City mashup, you know, in the 1880s or something like that. So super excited about bringing that together, too. And it's been collaborative. We've kind of been building it together.

Yeah, it's been a lot of fun to build a whole new world, all of us together. And with adding our characters and adding a little bit more world building to. It's been a lot of fun because we know each other so well as we've been working together for four years now.

It's crazy.

We know what each person brings to the table, and so it's been a lot of fun to put that together in this world.

I will say I fell in love with your character almost immediately when I heard his name. Just as soon as I saw it, I was like, oh, my gosh. I could almost hear the voice. So wherever you want to start with the concept, which came first, the chicken or the egg? The name or the character? Just talk to me about where this person was born in your head.

Okay. So it's not the first character that we were going to make for Campaign 3. However, because the 2024 Players Handbook came out, I decided because I was going to do a mishmash of something from Kobold Press and something from Eberron. It was just going to be a mishmash of things.

Original character.

Yeah. So the 2024 character, I wanted to go back to just doing something simple from that. And so I'm going to play a cleric. His name is Elias Stone.

Oh, that's awesome.

And Elias. And you know, so I wanted to make a cleric. I know he will eventually be a life cleric. I wanted to make him a healer. I wanted to make him a doctor. Because the great thing about playing it in kind of a 19th century Americana, we don't just have healers or clerics, we actually have physicians. We have doctors.

Yes.

So my original take was I thought about who's the greatest doctor to me that I know, the most famous iconic doctor of all time. And that would have to be Dr. McCoy.

Dr. Leonard McCoy.

Dr. Leonard McCoy from Star Trek. Because, I mean, he is. And I wanted to do. And again, if you're talking about Americana, I wanted to do kind of a down home. I want old country doctor. He is just. He just does the simple remedies and he knows how to make sure things work. And so that's really what I wanted was to do Leonard McCoy but make it into a D and D campaign.

Which is so great because just to be nerdage for a while, that concept of Dr. Leonard McCoy, as you said, was indeed kind of like the wagon train doctor.

Exactly.

That's.

So that is exactly why. Because if Star Trek is kind of based off of that wagon train to the stars and Dr. McCoy is that country doctor and he always was. I think the way DeForest Kelly played him from the very beginning was that even out in space, he's just the good old down home doctor that walks around with a doctor's bag and goes and does house calls.

Yes.

And so that's really what I wanted to do. Elias was not. But the name itself was nothing.

Okay.

I wanted an old. See, I put more thought into Gideon Block because Gideon Bloch was based off of the Seventh Seal and Max Von Seidow's character, Octavius Bloch.

Yes, yes.

Who eventually dies. And so there was a little bit of foreshadowing there, although I didn't know it was going to happen. So that was Gideon Bloch and that's why I named him Bloch. And Blackjack was kind of charlatan type of feel. You know, he made up a name that was kind of rabid Y. But for Elias, I just wanted something that was 19th century feeling along with some kind of A steampunk last name like Stone Steel, something like that. So Stone just kind of fit. And as I've built this character, it's just. It's somebody I'm excited to play.

You bet. Ah, this is so, so good. So do we get the impression he, at least flavor text wise, will be using a particular skill set for, like, mundane medicine as well?

Yes, yes. So he actually has the healer feet from the 2024 Player's Handbook, so he'll be depending on that, of course, as well as his newly found clerical skill. Cleric, not clerical cleric skills that. Yeah. That he is able to heal as well. But his whole identity is about healing. His whole identity is about kindness, about caring for people, especially people who are downtrodden.

You bet.

Making sure that everybody. The idea of losing somebody would really hurt him. So it's really important that he keeps people alive. Of course, he'll have high wisdom, which. The reason I'm excited about that is because we were just listening to the fourth action in that there's no wisdom characters.

There's no wisdom characters in there at all. In the Pathfinder 4th Action Wayfinder Legends.

I get to bring the wisdom. I have no charisma, though, so my bedside manner is pretty bad.

I love it. I love it.

Which makes, again, it's McCoy. He knows what he needs to do. He's a kind person. He's a loving person and wants to heal you. But his bedside manner sometimes can be a little crass.

He might slap you and say, be still.

Right, Exactly.

That's outstanding. Is there, quote unquote, a Michael Kross theme with your character so far? Do you see, or is there a comparison contrast between Gideon Blackjack and now Dr. Elias Stone?

Blackjack was fun. I just wanted to make something that was fun and had all his family members and, you know, 27, whatever. Blackjack and Elias, there's gonna be a lot of similarities. People can see in their backstories. What they're not going to be able to see is the way the two handle it. For Gideon, his tragic backstory sent him into a bottle.

Oh, yes.

And for Elias, it was. His tragic backstory is not going to send him there. It does send him into reclusiveness, but eventually he finds that his purpose in life is made stronger by that tragic backstory. So awesome.

It sounds like he is not a native of Ironspire, the city that we are starting in.

Right. He is actually a native somewhere else. And we'll find that out as we go through because there's a lot of Stuff that we gotta go through. He's got a tragic backstory and I wanna be able to share that during the podcast.

That's fantastic. Not that he had hardship and trouble, but that we get to discover more and more about this character. Did you say 49?

He is 49 actually. Yeah. And he's human.

Yeah.

So he's the other reason I chose. I wanted McCoy and I wanted him to be aged. He has had life experiences going back 30. 30 to 40 years.

Yeah.

That most people, especially when they're brand new wide eyed adventurers, don't usually have. So I wanted to have him to have a little bit more experience and to bring that again. McCoy was one of the oldest of all the cast members.

Yes.

And he had had that life experience before joining the crew of the Enterprise. And I wanted to kind of bring that to what's going to happen with the cast.

And I don't think there was too much interplay conversation about ages and stuff amongst the cast. And that's exactly what's happened. He, if we put everybody into human, know, timeline, he's going to be basically somewhere between 20 and 30 years older than some of the other members of the party.

Yeah. And Gideon was older too, but he was a half elf. Right, right. So he, I think I made him about 35, 36 years old, but as a half elf. That's still a pup.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Any, any last things, ideas, tricks, clues, insights that you want to share about Dr. Elias Stone?

His favorite color is blue. That's all I can tell you. Because again, based off of McCoy, I was like, I basically. No, I just, I'm really excited about what we're going to be able to do with this. And this cast has been working together so well for four years that the idea of bringing a brand new campaign, a new story to people I think is going to be exciting and I think people are going to be really excited to see it.

That's fantastic. You will get to see in your imagination the piercing blue eyes of Dr. Elias Stone and all of our other characters. Coming up December 4th right here on this podcast feeder and or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. Any last words? Michael Cross, you want to take us out? You're always good at that.

I'm always excited. And for more, just listen wherever you get your podcasts and you can also find us at patreon.com Red Dirt DND See you soon.