Today the transcription faces a particular challenge: the group has added a new member who is purely telepresent, meaning that I get to listen to everyone talking over the speakers! Woohoo! As we recall last time, our heroes has plowed through the bottom level of the dungeon complex they awoke in, and had reached the stairs to the next level.

DM: After a few minutes of scaling the stairs – the relatively unfinished stairs—
Dirzeari: (pointing to the minis) We need to take Guiles out for the moment because he’s not with us yet,
Skalturin: He just appears behind us somehow.
Dirzeari: We’re all like, “What the heck?!”
Mikas: “I’ve been trailing you since the beginning.”
DM: This basement seems a lot more finished. It’s been pretty used.
Mikas: (bursts into laughter)
DM: It’s not dusty. There’s been people here. Recently.
Dirzeari: So there’s empty Cheetos bags in the corner, stuff like that?
DM: You actually had to make a good Strength check to break through the tile that was covering the stairs. Doors to your left and right, door directly in front of us.
Skalturin: I listen at the door directly in front of us.
DM: You hear a subtle hiss. Nothing vocalized, almost like a wind blowing through a crack.
Skalturin: I listen at the door at the left.
DM: Nothing much going on there. The sound of an empty room.
Skalturin: I listen at the door on the right.
DM: Give me a Listen check.
Skalturin: Oh, this is where the monster is… Pathetic, 11.
DM: Same as the other rooms. You hear… kind of a, maybe a cat. Something clicking. But very subtle.
Mikas: I think Gorbul should use his fire breath and burn all the doors down.
DM: When you were near the front door, you saw a fine… almost fog or mist seeping through the bottom, and slightly through the middle section, stopping about two feet up.

They try the silent door. It’s unlocked! They attempt to position the webcam for Guiles; comedy ensues. Skalturin shoves the door open, patting himself on the back as he does.

Mikas: Don’t worry, I gotcha covered.
Skalturin: Gonna put an arrow in my back to end my misery? If something over there grabs me.
Mikas: Exactly. Dude, we’ve all seen Starship Troopers, it’s like when the guy got picked up by the flying bug. He picked up the sniper rifle and killed his own men.
DM: It’s like a very large storage area. The area’s filled with it looks like spider webbing all over the place, surrounding a lot of cracked-open barrels and—
Skalturin: I seize Gorbul by the shoulders!
DM: Off in the corners, you see two large… huge, almost egg-shaped webbing. Gimme a Spot check, we’ll see if you see the last one…

The group gets distracted trying ti figure out the gratuitous honking noises being made by the laptop; it appears to be just feedback, although Skalturin blames peahens. The group grimly acknowledges that the web-balls are either people who need to be freed, or swarms.

Mikas: I’m going to ready alchemist’s fire.
Skalturin: Dude. No.
Mikas: What, man?!
Skalturin: We HAVE a guy who breathes fire. We don’t need your alchemist’s fire.
Mikas: I’m just trying to help…
DM: Alchemist’s fire is very spready, though. The room would go up and anyone inside would die.
Mikas: Eh, shut the door.
Dirzeari: And what if Guiles is in there? Are we gonna have roasted druid and wolf?
Skalturin: That’d be kind of awkward.
Mikas: Aww. My bad, dude. Roll a new character.
DM: Does ignorance protect you from alignment shifts…?

The webbing on the back of the wall seems to be subtly moving. Clopping jokes are made for some reason. Guiles’s entry into the campaign is quickly narrated; he is a druid in charge of regrowing the forest in this area, and in the course of doing so has opened a sinkhole! Down in the hole, they prod the nearest web-sac, which promptly bursts into a spider swarm. Initiative! Somehow, three people go at 21.

Dirzeari: I’m close to the door. I’m going to just start squashing them with my club.
DM: Doesn’t do anything. Remember the last tine, we got all pissed off? Let me rephrase that, I got all pissed off.
Skalturin: A, step back. B, Gorbul. That’s our plan here.

The spiders obstinately release their friends from the other web-sacs. Gorbul steps up and starts breathing fire! They see the hole at the same time Guiles sees a wash of fire, looking down. Skalturin charges in and crits his attack for 47 all told, ending the large spider.

DM: The spider was not prepared. That plus the fire damage he took during the blaze was enough to put him down.
Skalturin: Oh sure, the fire damage was needed to put him out.
DM: Let me rephrase that. Put him out completely. He’s a liquid ball of char and blood.
Skalturin: Basically I just grabbed him and rent him in quarters.
Guiles: That was relatively violent…

Spiders swarm at the adventurers! Skalturin teleports back into the stair room and Dirzeari drops a quick cure light on him. Gormul cleans out the room with another blast of fire. The DM asks for a Spot check from Guiles.

Guiles: I think this die is broken, sir.
DM: You were distracted by a cute and cuddly squirrel. You guys look up and you see a... give me a Spot check, guys, let’s see if you can do any better.
Skalturin: 20.
Gormul: 18.
Dirzeari: Natural 1!

They spot Guiles… well, most of them spot Guiles. Dirzeari haules Skalturin five feet up so he can teleport up and get the drop on him.

Mikas: I do want to point out that we woke up in this dungeon after being asleep for like a hundred years, and we’re just like, okay, we have no idea what’s going on, so the FIRST person we come in touch with in the outside world – is to kidnap him and drag him into the dungeon?!
Dirzeari: Yeah!
Skalturin: I want answers, don’t you want answers?
Mikas: Okay, I’m readying my rope to tie him up as soon as he gets down here.
DM: I TOLD you this is another character! You guys could make your characters just a LITTLE BIT more approachable!
Mikas: Hey! This is like when I showed up as an old woman and you guys threw a HAMMER at me!

Skalturin pops up next to Guiles, and he and the DM argue about his character’s appearance for a while. They resolve it by showing Guiles the picture of a skarn from the book.

DM: The site before you is actually fairly familiar. The druid society has not changed much. Unless you potentially happen to have Profession(cloth) or (weaving), you can’t really tell the difference between his outfit and a druid of your time’s outfit.
Guiles: So he looks like a druid from my time?
Skalturin: No, YOU look like a druid from your time.
DM: And before you is an ancient warrior. From the distant past.
Dirzeari: 100 years isn’t exactly the distant past.
DM: That’s eight generations, that’s enough for shit to be forgotten.
Skalturin: (in his best Mako voice) But a FOOLISH totemist warrior wielding the magic spikes stepped forth to oppose me!
DM: (oddly paralytic with laughter) Shut up!
Skalturin: Oh, I’ve figured out his next one too! This whole game’s a Samurai Jack reference. Aku flung open a gate to the future, where his evil is law!
DM: Come on guys, you’ve met each other now. RP!

Skalturin demands answers from Guiles, in a way that makes the other player laugh, which Skalturin attempts to claim is IC laughter as he rolls for initiative.

Dirzeari: I’m laughing at you too! Are you going to roll initiative on me?
Skalturin: Apparently!
Guiles: “Who are you?”
Skalturin: “I think I’m asking the questions here.”
Guiles: Sorry, I missed the RP and the whole thing.
Skalturin: Yeah, I was saying that in character…

Skalturin attempts to pump Guiles for information. It goes poorly at best, for the main reason that Guiles doesn’t have much information in the first place. Mikas tosses up a rope and they secure it, with more difficulty than the entire process deserved. The transcriber finally gets fed up with the state of affairs and digs out the old computer speakers from the group’s old telegaming days. Mikas insists on exploring the rest of the dungeon; the group pretty much agrees to this implicitly, recognizing that there’s treasure and adventure down there.

Gorbul: “In or out, which is it?”
DM: You guys heard, “In and Out.”
Skalturin: We’re getting burgers, is that what I’m hearing?

Guiles, being a good druid, insists they address whatever creatures are lurking around down there before they can escape and crap up the environment. They handwave him getting his wolf down at the same time they mock it. Searching for treasure, they find gold and silver.

Skalturin: Any tapestries?
DM: You burned them.
Skalturin: You fool! They were worth 150 gold each!
DM: No, one of the tapestries was worth 7,000 gold.
Skalturin: Coming out of your shoulders.
Gorbul: I SEIZE you by the shoulders. “You wanted me to burn it!”

In the course of their searching, they turn up a covered-up hole. Mikas peers around the corner just inside it using a mirror, seeing a little ways down – and a couple pairs of glowing red eyes.

Skalturin: Gorbal, quick, stick your head in there and breath lightning.

Surprisingly, he DOES. But the creatures had retreated. Some of them start crawling in after the creatures, discovering the passageway is made out of metal as they do.

DM: So whatcha doing now?
Skalturin: Continuing to keep up a running commentary so they know I haven’t died. I assume they’re all following me into danger.
Gorbul: I’m behind you.
DM: “WE ARE RIGHT BEHIND YOU, SIR! KEEP GOING!”
Gorbul: As we’re putting the rocks back in place.
DM: You notice the light going out behind you… As you get closer you see an offshoot.
Gorbul: (noticing his minature) Apparently I’m going ass-first.
Skalturin: You’re covering the rear.
DM: You refuse to look at his butt.
Skalturin: You loaned me your mirror, right?
DM: No, they smashed it.

Fog starts pouring in as they turn to the mirror to see into the offshoot, but something large is blocking their sight! The DM threatens them with death and despair as he demands to know their actions!

Skalturin: Only one thing to do! Honorable suicide. I drink my enlarge person potion. I’ll block it from getting to my friends with my corpse!
DM: You watch in horror as he grows!

Down the narrow tunnel, Skalturin hears something creeping. He spots a smooth-skined, shiny-black dire-rat-sort-of-thing he can’t recognize, and rolls Knowledge(Nature) to identify it.

DM: As far as you’re concerned, there was no creature like this in your world 100 years ago. Whatever it is, it’s something new.
Skalturin: Oh great, it’s a technorat.
Mikas: (beatboxing)
DM: You can tell that whatever it is, it’s not metal. It’s a hard, bony skull with a black sheen on it. It looks very similar to a bug in nature.
Dirzeari: It’s frickin’ Aliens.
Gorbul: It’s got a carapace on it.
DM: Yes, carapace, thank you. Very long head, very long limbs. Strong and bony.

The DM calls for initiative! The creatures go first, and scramble forward to bite at Skalturin with their mouth-inside-a-mouth attack.

DM: I believe that they should do far more damage. I’ve assigned them a template from the book, they still have another class, I think their attack should do more damage… Five damage to Skalturin. Dirzeari, you look up in front to see creatures attacking your friends! Guiles, you hear screams of pain coming from the corridor you left and did not wanna crawl inside. But you hear the cry also from the north-facing door that’s in the room that you’re just standing in right now. You hear it from behind you and in front of you.

Guiles hurls open the door, and sees dozens of egg-shaped objects strewn through the room. Dirzeari, who has seen Prometheus, is moaning quietly, made worse when Guiles sees a giant creature all the way in the back. The wolf bites a creature, trips it, but takes 2 points of acid damage from its blood splashing.

DM: Facehugger meet dragons, Gorbul. Facehuggers meet dragons.

Dirzeari starts casting Summon Monster, while Mikas snipes the fallen creature. Skalturin churns out his three attacks on the creature, missing with one but eating acid damage for the two successful ones. The PCs do confirm that the creature in back is a black dragon with an Alien template, or whatever the DM is claiming it to be; he also advises lightning, which Gorbul obligingly delivers.

DM: How much damage?
Gorbul: 11 points.
DM: Ah, he is messed up, but he’s not down. He’s looking quite messed up, though. But the two things behind him quickly burst. Remove those two in line. They burst.
Mikas: Swarms of spiders come out!
DM: You see the brains of small creatures which didn’t quite survive the burst hit.

The wolf bites the one that stands up in front of it, and the DM accidentally calls for another trip against; for some reason, Skalturin doesn’t complain about this, which in hindsight probably means he’s insane.

DM: Now, strange things start to happen.
Skalturin: Anybody who’s hit by acid has to make a saving throw or you become one yourself.
DM: They’re not zombies… Some of the eggs start to shudder and open up, Strange, small, spider-like creatures start to come out.

No one is happy to see the facehuggers. One comes up to say hello to Skalturin, grappling him, but Skalturin wins the check. Dirzeari summons a celestial giant fire beetle, which moves up to slaughter one of the little things. Guiles’ wolf whiffs an attack, while the druid begins casting Summon Nature’s Ally. Skalturin spine-slashes and claws creatures.

DM: You take another two points of acid damage.
Skalturin: Welp, I’m down! No…
DM: Oh, THREE points! Just tell me when you’re down!

The remaining people in the tunnel scramble into the room as the DM, realizing that crawling is only 5 feet of movement per action, waives the rule to get them in faster. A facehugger rolls really poorly on a grapple.

DM: As the strange small creature attempted to jump in and grapple with the face of the dog, at that particular moment the dog chose to yawn and open its mouth.
Skalturin: It’s very bored in combat.
DM: Either way, the dog was opening its mouth for reasons unknown, and the creature jumped right in. The dog was easily able to crush it in its mouth, killing it instantly. Mikas and another facehugger get into a grapplewar.

DM: It’s able to resist your attempts to throw it to the ground as it falls to the ground, and makes way for another attack. The one that’s barely standing tries to attack the wolf again, but he does not roll high enough, because this die sucks.
Guiles: He’s getting his butt kicked by a wolf.
Gorbul: He should be ashamed.

Obligingly, Guiles summons another wolf. The combatants trade uninteresting attacks for a bit, but a leathery sac descends from the ceiling and other creatures begin to lurch to activity. All the other eggs come alive! Dirzeari has completely vanished from the table, to everyone’s confusion, and, unable to proceed till her action is resolved, the game goes on an awkward pause… for an hour. It finally picks up again when they decide she’s not coming back, with Skalturin awkwardly controlling her character. Not surprisingly, her action is to heal Skalturin. Wolves slaughter a creature as Guiles deploys healing on his animal companion.

DM: Don’t you have a special heal for your pet? A pet mend?
Skalturin: No.
Guiles: I wish I did.
Mikas: HA HAAAAAAA! ..I shot myself in the foot.
Skalturin: Twaaaang.
Mikas and Gorbul: Bowstring.
Skalturin: No. Because it DIDN’T fire!
Gorbul: You’re covered… but you know you’re still wrong.
Mikas: Ohhhh. I fired my bow, but forgot to nock an arrow.
DM: You snap your string, take a whopping one point of damage, and a nice hickey on your face to constantly remind you of your failure.
Mikas: Hey, can that be one point of subdual damage?
Skalturin: (who briefly dabbled in archery in his youth) No, those things HURT.

Skalturin kills something, then starts rolling up a new character as it’s ‘everything else’s turn’. Gorbul points to the map.

Gorbul: I like how the dungeon went M.C. Escher. The outside tunnel’s connected to the inside…

Again, Guiles’ wolf avoids pain somehow, but another one leaps up to facehug the summoned wolf. It’s the summoned wolf, so no one cares. The dragon-creature unleashes a mist of acid, annihilating the summons (and the facehugger on the wolf). Attacks are traded once again. The DM notes that Guiles’ staff, a bludgeoning weapon, did not provoke the acid splashes… which only prompts bemused grumbling from other party members.

DM: Let me do the little guys… one already fought the beetle, so one’s going to attempt to jump at Mikas again. I’m gonna get one of you. One of you gonna’s have a problem soon – oh, but he failed! Damn it! I’m not gonna get a chestburster in ANYONE! I want to see you guys try to save your characters without getting meta. “I feel okay, everything’s fine, it died immediately afterwards. I must be okay.”
Skalturin: “Yeah, it only shoved its genitalia down my throat, how would I know something’s wrong.”
DM: And the other one misses your dog.
Mikas: Wait a minute, misses the dog but constantly hits me.
DM: It rolled a 9! Against you it rolled a 16! You’re lucky the little guy didn’t hit you.

Dirzeari continues on her mindless AFK healbot duties, while the DM complains about square paper plates and Skalturin (who just took a fair chunk of damage) attempts to roll up a new character. Guiles’ wolf botches its attack; Guiles whacks for five, although in retrospect it appears he’s been rolling a d8 for staff damage this entire time.

DM: Skalturin, you have a very large creature in your way! What’re you gonna do?
Skalturin: DESTROY IT. (rolling) No…
Gorbul: Really? All three?
Skalturin: 4, 2, 2.
DM: And it was all three god dice. Wow. What a turn!

Hastily restringing her bow, Mikas takes out another of the little guys, and Gorbul just keeps breathing fire. The beetle and another little one kill each other, a wolf takes some damage, and the dragon starts its full attack cycle on Skalturin.

DM: Damn it. I don’t know how I got doubles on 2d20. The last one pulls off a hit—
Skalturin: Decapitating me.
DM: It’s only his tail slash, it’s not the highest damage. 5 points of damage.

The kitchen timer immediately rings.

Salturin: Welp, I’m done.
DM: You’re unconscious?
Skalturin: No, the bell signaled me out.
DM: He goes off to his corner. Doc is there.

Dirzeari healbots again. Guiles leaps into action again, while the Punch-Out music abruptly floods the speakers, angering the DM.

DM: On Super Punch-Out, everyone is cheating! Like the old man is using a staff, and kicks you. It’s a boxing match, old man, that’s not allowed!
Guiles: 8 damage.
DM: 8 damage? Whap! That’s enough to knock him out. Skalturin, let’s do it again. Let’s let these god dice redeem themselves.
Mikas: GOD DICE.
Skalturin: Just two. Aww, that’s some shitty rolling. 11 damage.
DM: You slash at him, but you notice this armor is even harder than the other, and some of the damage is warded away.
Skalturin: Aww cripe. Let’s just roll over and die, guys.
DM: Don’t worry, Gorbul over here is fucking punishing him.

Gorbul obligingly blasts again, amusingly contrasting Skalturin’s frenzy of multi-attacking with his own actions of “breath every round”. The dragon flies into the air to breathe acid on everyone except Gorbul. Dirzeari healbots again.

Guiles: I’m gonna do what I do best: sent the puppy in. …Worst possible without critical failing.

Mikas also misses; Skalturin uses his Landshark Boots meld for a pounce attack, dealing 24 damage.

DM: Easily tearing through the armor this time. You see a little bit warded away, but still crushes it as acid splashes—
Skalturin: It’s still technically four attacks. Each attack was a minimum of 5…
DM: Okay. Still some damage warded away.
Skalturin: DR 5/-, I can’t hurt him…
DM: It’s not that high. If it was DR 5, I’d be like, ‘You barely scratch it’!

Gorbul blasts again, and in retaliation, the dragon unloads its full attack on the wolf for some reason.

DM: The first two swings, the two claws, go out, dealing—
Skalturin: You can tell this is where he starts fudging it to let us survive.
DM: I rolled a one!
Skalturin: I’m saying, it’s attacking the dog, which has one attack, instead of me, which has 3—
DM: Which miss a lot. You miss more than the dog. Anyways, back to the point of the story—
Skalturin: Do the PCs survive?
DM: I don’t want to end the game this early, you guys haven’t even gotten to the real meat of the story.
Skalturin: And at this rate we’re not going to.
Mikas: The dragon decides to retreat… out the hole created by the sinkhole, and is terrorizing the world of men again!
Skalturin: No, as soon as we kill this thing, the ten times bigger one will step out the back door and start slow-clapping at us. “You killed my offspring. All according to my plan…”
DM: Shut up. The puppy takes a whopping fifteen points of slashing damage, but when the giant creature whipped its tail back to strike it gets caught. The force of its muscles tear his own tail off, dealing himself a pretty decent amount of damage and negating one of his attacks.

The wolf gets dropped to exactly 0 hit points.Guiles and Skalturin attack ineffectually the DM begs Gorbul for a big hit, which he delivers! The dragon dies in brutal electrical explosion.

Guiles: (having caught on very quickly how this works) And it kills everyone!

Seven points of acid damage to all! The characters begin frantically triaging themselves as the corpse dissolves.

DM: A very large egg sac drops from the ceiling, splashes.
Skalturin: A guy appears out of it. <(slow-clapping)
DM: (after several seconds) In the very center, gathered much like a dragon would, a bunch of gems and jewels. Its hoard,.
Skalturin: It’s a gem swarm. It attacks!
DM: It seems that the dragon thought the gems would give its brood more power. In the center, the prettiest thing in the group: an untouched dragon egg.

Dirzeari (in absentia) rolls a good Knowledge check to recognize that this egg is in protective hibernation, so to speak, and is still viable despite its age. Loot is distributed; the DM accidentally identifies the shield they find as +1, then bitterly just gives them the identification of all the items. The characters, shuddering from PTSD, debate their next actions; said next action is retreating the hell out of the dungeon to Guiles’ camp to lick their wounds.

DM: It’s midday, not humid outside, fairly nice with a slight breeze. The forest is fairly…. Starts with an f…
Skalturin: Fragrant?
DM: No. Very green.
Guiles: Leafy?
Skalturin: These are EVERGREENS! You’re a TERRIBLE druid!
DM: Serene. It’s oddly quiet for such a nice-looking forest. You’d expect to see far more wildlife, but it hasn’t moved back in yet.

No one likes this flavor text, but no one likes their HP totals either, so they start setting up camp.

Gorbul: Our tents are a hundred years old. (miming fabric crumbling) “Fuck!”

Comparing some Knowledge(geography) to Guiles’ knowledge, the group determines that a large elven village here appears to have been completely razed, and then turn to the journals they’d found for further information.

DM: One of the main tasks you’d agreed upon… you weren’t… let’s just say you didn’t agree on sleeping a hundred years. You agreed to defeat a great threat. In the time that you came from, you were great heroes.
Skalturin: At third level.
DM: No, you were – you’ll get more details on what happened, but based on this book, you were great heroes, and he bid you to go defeat a great threat. This brings up some memories, you remember going to this area, fighting a big threat.
Gorbul: Ah, we got hit by something that gives a ton of negative levels.
Skalturin: “Aw, these guys suck now. Put them away.” We got retired by our OLD PLAYERS!
DM: When the battle was over, things went dark, and then you woke up here.

The DM strongly hints that they’ll regain their old powers faster than if they’d started out as green heroes, and on that note he awards enough experience for the group to level up (except latecomer Guiles). They briefly fill in Guiles on their encounters on the dungeon’s lowest level.

DM: And Skalturin found a door to the darkest place in the world.
Mikas: Skalturin found a door to hell, dude. Straight up door to hell.
DM: You managed to recover the other book, and the book goes into more detail on—
Skalturin: “Oh yeah, don’t go in THIS door.”
DM: Apparently you defeated the demon, thus trapping the portal, preventing the invasion of the world. But it also took you out of the equation. Thus the shift in powers changed, and the world changed.. The death of the demon -- (bitterly) -- as Skalturin said earlier, brought a weakening of magic with the rest of the world, thus giving the dark ones a better chance of victory….

Oddly, the book foretells the arrival of Guiles! It expresses the hope that the druid will aid them…

DM: …though I don’t think he’ll be able to tell you much about the world around you.
Guiles: I was not the top graduate of druidic class, I’ll tell you that.

The group settles in to level up to 4. Dirzeari finally returns to the table, bemoaning the phone call she’d gotten roped into.

DM: Well, you were able to heal the others, and you eventually defeated the queen, the biggest dragon,
Mikas: Single. Handedly. It was actually really impressive.
Skalturin: And you’re completely out of spells.

After a long OOC time and two uneventful nights, the PCs are back to full health.and ready to go back down into the dungeon… although OOC they’re perfectly aware they defeated the boss and won’t be seriously challenged down there. Guiles continues about his druidic business, aided by Skalturin, who actually has ranks in Knowledge(Nature).

Skalturin: Maybe explain a few things to him, like, “Yes. That’s called a ‘tree’.”
Gorbul: Asshoooooole.
Skalturin: He has no ranks in Knowledge(Nature).
Gorbul: Still an asshooooooole.
Skalturin: He’s a druid with no ranks in Knowledge(Nature)!
Gorbul: Still an asshooooooole.
Skalturin: I’m totally justified!
Gorbul: No you are not.
Skalturin: Why am I not?!
DM: ANYWAYS, after about two nights’ rest, you heal yourselves to full…

Down they head, and discover a back door is braced and blocked from the other side. Mikas whips a portable ram out of nowhere, and they charge said door with intent to penetrate. It doesn’t go well.

Skalturin: Well, we’ll just have to crawl around it.
Mikas: Why don’t we just try again? It’s a ram, dude.
Gorbul: You just give up in one? These guys out there at fucking castle gates, going “HEE HAW!”
Mikas: They got burning oil and tar and arrows and stones fall on them, and this guy is completely—
Gorbul: “One. Done.” That’s what we’ll call you. One and Done Skal.

In they smash, discovering a room filled with machines! Screens display the other rooms of the dungeon! Skalturin nearly dies choking on pie. Dust coats the machines thickly, demonstrating their lack of use.

Mikas: I want to consult the journal.
DM: The journal mentions a few things of future activities, but it doesn’t really give you an idea.
Skalturin: I want to consult the Mind of Kalroth.

Mikas attempts to use Knowledge(Dungeoneering), but her knowledge is woefully out of date and inadequate. The DM promises she will regain utility in the knowledge soon.

Skalturin: Your Knowledge(Dungeoneering) will be replaced by Knowledge(missile silos).
DM: That’s oddly specific.
Skalturin: Not in your campaign, man. They’re everywhere. Like every ten feet, there’s another silo.
DM: That’s true. There was like two bases that had missile silos! The mountain base and the final base.
Skalturin: I assume you’re trying to outdo yourself with this new campaign. Step it up a notch.
Dirzeari: Bam!
DM: When I envisioned those creatures, I was like, “Man, facehuggers on dragons. Awesome.”

They continue to explore the last remaining room, and discover… a storeroom. Full of treasure and goods, including a case of wands.

DM: I don’t know what all the wands look like. It’s pissing me off.
Skalturin: Make it up. It’s all I do.
DM: Really?! I thought you had descriptions or something!
Skalturin: I do, I make them up.
DM: …Wow….

The players promptly guess every wand just from its description. The DM throws his notes down angrily and refuses to describe wands any more; instead, he describes the mysterious noise they had heard as a breeze blowing through weapons, and mocks the party for avoiding the room intended to prepare them for the big fight. He then describes potions as vaguely as possible to avoid their nature being guessed, plus some tents and mundane supplies.

Skalturin: Aww, this was the pre-boss save point… Well, looks like we’ll go take down that grate.
Mikas: Wait, do you want to distribute gold or anything like that?
Skalturin: Naw, save it for the end, it’s not like we’re spending it or anything down here. Smash open the door – hey, it’s Neko, the Price-Gouging Cat!

Continuing on, they discover the grate is bizarrely resilient – and smashing it hard enough makes the lights flicker. Gorbul promptly unloads lightning into it, overloading the power supply and plunging them all into darkness. Mikas hauls the gate up, then mocks the rest of the group, which consists of people who are NOT tiny elves lifting almost twice their weight.

Mikas: And there’s the 250 dude warrior and the whatever the hell he is –
Gorbul: 260 pounds, six foot eight, thank you.
Mikas: And here’s the little elf girl. “AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”
DM: You’re going to need to lift it more to get through…
Mikas: ..with her pink air and olive skin. I didn’t realize I gave her pink hair. Green eyes, pink hair, and olive skin.
DM: …What race are you?!
Mikas: Elf.
Skalturin: Roll for initiative.
Gorbul: No wonder your Charisma is so low.
DM: I don’t think that’s possible… but whatever, it’s fine.

They head up the stairs into ruins. Grass is growing over a pale metal surface and the walls are made of a strange red stone and large metal beams. The players take a moment to explain just how huge the game apartment goldfish is.

Skalturin: It’s becoming a koi. It’s evolving.
DM: Those fish were Highlander. Every time one died, the others were stronger. He’s the last. He’s the one.

They’re now in the middle of the ruins Guiles was supposed to be avoiding, pretty much spelling the end of the dungeon. The DM explains that druids are desperately attempting to regrow the forests devastated by the war.

DM: Giving them the basic knowledge. “Here’s how you grow a tree. Go out and grow lots of trees.”
Skalturin: But they can’t even do that! No Knowledge(nature)! Seeds, what the heck are those?!
DM: He has a manual that tells them how to do it.
Skalturin: I read it.
Dirzeari: YOU DON’T KNOW HOW TO READ! You’re illiterate, you stupid idiot!
Mikas: You know who he is? He’s Farmer Yoon. He gets other people to do all his planting for him.

The DM gives them some background information, but not much; Guiles is able to fill in some blanks for them, but also not much. Skalturin grumpily insists the journal and their own memories may be untrustworthy, to resounding silence. The game starts to trail off… as the DM explains the concept of the Oily Pringles Man to Guiles and they reminisce over the old games…