It’s next time! It starts off weird!

Aiden: (singing to the GI Joe theme) Evil spreading far and wide! Who will turn the tide?
Aliarra: Transformers!
Aliarra, Hanzo, Aiden, and the DM: More than meets the eye!
Aiden: Look, Optimus, not everything is Megatron.
DM: Megatron!
Aiden: “Optimus, my ice cream melted!” “Megatron! Obviously he brought the sun closer to earth, melting your ice cream!”
Aliarra: “How did he know…?”

Picking up the battle where they left off, Pan steps up to the plate at the top of the round. He attempts to Storm Bolt the nearest target, proving that he hasn’t really been paying attention. Since there are no targets, he opts for the Hail Mary play of lobbing Confusion into the corpse pile. Meanwhile, Aliarra seeks good music for the battle.

Aiden: Is that Tactics Ogre?!
Aliarra: Ogre Battle. That’s as close as you could have gotten without being right.

Aliarra wanders off on a tangent on how she made a mage too evil to advance to the more evil magic class than his current one, while Pan attempts to get out of charging range. Aliarra moves up, granting free movement to Mrrshala and Hanzo to get them over to the corpse pile in turn.

DM: Your necklace begins to vibrate. “Aliarra?”
Hanzo: “Is now a good time?”
Aiden: “I was having a cheese sandwich and I was thinking of you and the team, wondering if you were doing okay.”
Aliarra: You remember, last time I told him we were about to fight an izual.
Aiden: “How’s that izual going?”
Cissy: “Is that thing dead yet?”
Aliarra: “Denelos, is that cheese sandwich made purely out of smoke?” “Yesh! …I’m sho hungry. I haven’t eaten real food in yearsh.”
DM: Smoky cheese. “Pardon me, Aliarra, something’s happening on the other end here. I’ll be with you… momentarily.”
Aliarra: “We got this, if you’re busy. We’re just gonna hit it till it dies.”
Hanzo: He’s trying to kill the elven king right now.
DM: “Shut up, Hanzo!”
Hanzo: He’ll be killed with a non-masterwork dagger…
Aliarra: It WAS masterwork! And it was only non-magical because Tyraen got off a Mordenkainen’s Disjunction.
Aiden: That just rips apart magic.
Hanzo: Why don’t we USE that spell?!
Aliarra: Because it’s ninth level.
Hanzo: Oh.

Aiden waxes fondly on about the Street Fighter II animated movie. Mrrshala stabs the corpse pile with her ranseur, making everyone wonder what the hell a ranseur even is. Cissy throws some sort of damaging spell into the mix.

Aiden: Oh, oh no, wrong spell! Inflict Pain on the Brain.
DM: “Sorry guys… uh, Cissy didn’t make it!”

Hanzo considers his actions, while Cissy clarifies her motives here.

Cissy: I’m dropping a fucking fireball right in the middle of that pile.
Aliarra: Not RIGHT in the middle of it, god damn it!
Cissy: Why not?
Aliarra: I’ll burn!
Cisys: Naw, you’re not… you know… fine, five feet to the left. I’m dropping the fireball so it basically just misses Aliarra and Mrrshala.
Aliarra: Nothin’ but babies underneath there.
DM: The last remaining babies of the minotaur tribe.
Hanzo: Oh, these are the babies we have to give. We have to go all the way back to the beginning area.
Mrrshala: Veal! We’re having veal for dinner!
Hanzo: Alone one will stand, dead baby in hand!
DM: The piles of bodies proves too dense for the fireball, only the outer layers burn.

Ignir awaits the arrival of their foe – and then the corpse pile begins to move, slowly at first but speeding up into a spinning sphere of bodies protecting the izual.

Aliarra: Somewhere, King Lassarin yells, ‘Copyright infringement!’
DM: He held it out, this one’s using it to protect him.

Ehlorra manifests Ectoplasmic Shambler around the izual, which baffles the hell out of everyone because what the hell is that. It turns out it summons a giant mass of thick ectoplasm that globs onto everything and deals damage every round.

Hanzo: Aliarra, would you care to regale us with your previous commentary on the wu jen?
Aliarra: I don’t think I ever complained about the wu jen…
Hanzo: You never had anything nice to say about it, either.
Aliarra: I don’t know the class…
Aiden: What was just an izual with a sphere of death around him is now an izual with a sphere of death around him surrounded by ectoplasmic body chunks. So what was a horrid sight is now a horrid sight in soup.
Pan: Fun times, I’ll throw a magic missile at him.
Aliarra: You can’t see him.
Hanzo: And Aliarra once again sabotages –
Aliarra: It’s not my fault, he’s been using lightning bolts and AOEs this whole time! Now he’s gotta come up with magic missile?!
Hanzo: If it makes you feel better you can magic missile my character.
Pan: Uh…. I’m sure Scry isn’t going to do anything.
Hanzo: Why not?!
Pan: Storm Bolt. 20 yard line.
Aliarra: Yard or feet?
Pan: That is a reserve feat.
Aliarra: (momentarily silence that perfectly conveys her confusion at wandering into an Abbott and Costello routine)

The other players force Aliarra to eat jerky. Pan rolls his miss chance without defining the parameters of the roll, leading the game to sputter to an inexplicable halt. Aiden cheerfully informs the group that Final Fantasy VIII was the DM’s favorite Final Fantasy, which obviously gets the game back on track perfectly. No one knows what happens with Pan’s Storm Bolt, because its destination point is concealed.

Aiden: It deflects off and hits Barack. Noooooo!
DM: Hmm, that’s a good idea. 8 directions…
Aliarra: Yeah, what’s he got to roll to hit Barack, DM?
DM: “Up and out!”
Aliarra: A ray just shooting off at top speed into the stratosphere. “I enfeebled the moon!”
DM: It just hits Strength, though. The izual’s gonna need that Strength, oh man…
Aliarra: Hey, maybe its dump stat is Strength. Now it’s too weak to carry its force armor.
DM: Did I write down its stats..?
Aliarra: It has to take it off. It steps out, it’s just this really old guy underneath it…
Hanzo: It’s Dr. Wily, sitting behind a glass pane..

A West Side Story dance-fight briefly erupts around the table. Aliarra shoves her Immovable Rod into the middle of the corpse sphere, but the corpses move around it instead of piling up on it. The group bemoans their possession of only one of these rods.

Hanzo: 4,000, how are we gonna make an immovable rod cabin?!
DM: Look out, here comes the unstoppable force! Oh, this is going to be fun…
Mrrshala: I’m probably going to be the body whacker, hurling bodies out of the shield – okay, I miss. I got a 13.
Hanzo: To hit the bodies?! The AC of the bodies can’t be that high.
Aliarra: Hey DM, how fast does an individual body move through each square?
DM: …I don’t know that! It moves fast enough to create a zombie shield!
Mrrshala: Okay, if it’s good enough to hit a body, okay fine – did you just cram that whole thing in your mouth?!
DM: Mmph mm mmph mp.
Cissy: I heard, “Don’t judge me!”
DM: You’re hearing my mumbles wrong.

Cissy gleefully anticipates shutting down the izual’s efforts with Evard’s Black Tentacles, only to run straight up against reality. Aliarra advises a Wall of Fire, instead. Aiden attempts to cast Planet Growth, stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the type he’s perfectly aware of.

Hanzo: We should all just go back into a huddle, have Aliarra crook her hand like, “Come at me bro,” and see what he can do.

A huge debate over Mega Man stage music erupts, and then Hanzo debates his actions. He ends up holding as Aiden had before. Cissy finally casts her Wall of Fire, demonstrating that she has the voice back (to Aliarra’s painful dismay). The izual moves the flaming sphere of bodies directly at Mrrshala and Aliarra.

Hanzo: So he just totally Wood Shielded you guys.
Aiden: I didn’t even think about that. Now that move just got a lot weirder. I just imagine four bodies surrounding him.
Hanzo: Well, if it was Wood Shield, it would’ve just hit Aliarra and then bounced upwards and off the screen. Because Wood Shield was useless against everything.

The pair take 24 points of damage after their saves, but they’re still cruising in the triple-digit HP. The izual again disappears, while the discussion gets really bad. Funny, but really bad. I wish I had less integrity and could transcribe it…

Pan: I forget, does Greater Invisibility let me see invisible stuff?
Aiden: This is not the Lord of the Rings.

Pan casts Shield on himself, revealing incidentally that he has Wall of Force prepared. Aliarra uses White Raven Tactics on Ignir, for lack of other options, then molests Mrrshala when the latter comes over to the table to move her miniature. Aiden prepares to lob a Greater Dispel as soon as the izual pops up and starts doing stuff. While nothing happens, the players cheerfully discuss Mega Man some more.

DM: From the smoke-- (knocking over the psion) Oops, sorry Ehlorra.
Aiden: She’s dead!
Aliarra: Did Denelos turn on us?!
Aiden: No, he just appeared! Amidst the confusion, you didn’t really hear it, your amulet smoked and fell to the ground.
Hanzo: Didn’t they appear in your slime?
DM: From out of the smoke steps Denelos. His attire is tattered, bloodstains all over him. He looks haggard.
Aliarra: “Dumbass, I told you we got this!”
Aiden: “You need to rest!”
DM: His companion, an elf, looks much the same. And in his free hand, Denelos clutches what looks to be like two large crystal shards.
Aliarra: A heart.
DM: “Quite the scene here!”
Cissy: Smells like barbeque!
Hanzo: Denelos, who is that with you? Golbez?
Aiden: ….shut up! That’s it, all other games are being burned. Y’all can go screw yourselves.
Hanzo: You mean all those games you don’t run?
Aiden: Damn right all those games I don’t run.
Aliarra: No no, Aiden, all you have to do for revenge is ask him what formation they’re assuming.
Aiden: (a pause, then maniacal cackling)
DM: The bodies begin to shift.

Aliarra gets bounced out of the way as the bodies form into a massive hulk. Aiden hurls his Greater Dispel Magic.

Aiden: And it also removes curses.
Aliarra: Hey, maybe the izual is cursed to obey Drek’thelar. We could get lucky.
Aiden: Aww, 18. Crap.
DM: Nope.
Aiden: Your curse of being a female has ended. You’re a male now.
Aliarra: …Huh.
Aiden: I still think I should have told the DM my character is secretly female. There’s a spell.

Ehlorra fires off Entangling Ectoplasm again. Pan’s turn is up!

Aliarra: Denelos is here, you better make him proud.
DM: He’s grading you. He has a piece of paper out. And two stamps, ‘pass’ and ‘fail’.
Aliarra: Has the pass one every gotten any use? Did he even bother to put ink on it?
Mrrshala: He has three stamps. Pass, fail, and one of Gandalf who says, ‘You shall not pass’.

Pan lobs a Ray of Enfeeblement and rolls a natural 1, while the players discuss how ‘Power Word: Die’ would function (as opposed to Power Word: Kill). The players desperately bid for the spell to not kill them all.

Aiden: It’s towering up above us, he’d have to shoot up, so I doubt he could accidentally hit anyone nearby.
DM: I dunno, it IS a natural 1…
Hanzo: Unless there was somebody flying…

Cissy gets confused and attempts to remove the miniatures representing Denelos and the elf from the map. Aliarra uses Elder Mountain Hammer to whack the monster, also using Combat Expertise in the process – to the DM’s epic confusion. Aiden and Aliarra sing along to the Mega Man music, while the DM and Hanzo complain about Mega Man 3.

Aliarra: Ignir Golbezed it.
DM: You watched him do it! He didn’t do it offscreen!
Aliarra: That’s why it failed.
DM: Shut up. You hammer into it.
Aliarra: One hammer to each leg, its kneecaps shatter. Its battle is over.
Aiden: It’s slowly turning to the right now.
DM: Several bodies do fall, and its knees buckle, but it continues to stand.
Aliarra: If it’s just going to walk off, I’m going to declare this a win.
Aiden: I was basing it off that one boss [in Firelands].
Aliarra: Right, but there’s no lava for it to walk into and wipe us all, so it’s just going to walk at this rate.
DM: Why didn’t I think this through? Oh wait, there’s another pile of bodies, it walks into them and gets stronger.
Cissy: It’s going to set itself on fire and then we’re going to all take fire damage…

Cissy bursts out a Flamestrike onto the izual in its corpse-mecha, beating its SR, while Aiden looks for something to do.

Aiden: I’m over here checking on Denelos. Does he need healing?
Aliarra: Denelos needs smoking. He’s just having a nicotine withdrawal something fierce.
Aiden: Cigars…?
DM: He looks pretty haggard, but his eyes have a set of determination.
Aliarra: “I gotta kick the habit!”
Hanzo: Denelos has seen some shit….
Aliarra: He slams heroin into his veins. “Denelos, I don’t think you’re replacing this with a healthy alternative.”
DM: The giant creature throws its hands into the ground. The ground beneath it begins to sicken.
Hanzo: The pulse begins to quicken. You’re a prince, not a chicken…

Mrrshala, naturally, passes her Fortitude save, while Ignir fails. The corruption lingers, however! Ehlorra fires Crystal Shards, while Pan launches off another Magic Missile.

DM: Denelos holds up one of the crystal shards. It begins to glow brightly.
Aliarra: He’s got an izual trap!
Hanzo: Don’t look into the trap, Aliarra.
DM: In the blink of an eye, you see him holding up the crystal, then puff! Three shots fire almost instantaneously out of his staff. One hits the creature dead-center, and the bodies split. The second blast hits the izual. The third blast, which looks like pure arcane fire, hits the izual. It almost looks as if it’s starting to tear apart. In a moment, two figures fall with the rest of the dead bodies to the earth. As you look upon them, you see what appears to be two izual – one of pure white, one of pure black. Denelos falls to a knee.
Aliarra: “Was it supposed to do that?!”
Denelos: “I don’t know! I’ve never thought these things before!”
Aliarra: “I really hope hitting the dark one is the right choice!”
Cissy: You’re going right through this person’s area of attack.
Aliarra: He’s on the ground. I’m above him.
Cissy: You’re 10 feet up? Doesn’t he have a 10 foot reach?
Aliarra: He’s on the ground. He’s not Go Go Gadget Arms! He’s FLAT on the ground.

Aliarra whacks the izual, while Mrrshala scrambles over to Aiden, the self-identified healbot.

Aiden: I am obligated by the church to ask you ahead of time if you would like to be healed normally or molested.
Mrrshala: …I want to be healed normally. I’ve been molested enough tonight.
Aiden: That is perfectly okay. By the power of the church I heal you, and do not molest you.

Aiden wanders off on a tangent about Cure Citical Wounds [sic!], then demands everyone roll their dice one at a time like Hanzo. The white izual begins purifying the ground beneath it. Hanzo and Aliarra spar over a goblin who activated Hendlar’s magic axe five years ago. Cissy rolls Knowledge(arcana) to get the basic idea that she should attack the dark izual, because it represents dark necromancy. She lighnting bolts it. Aliarra whacks it as it floats off the ground, and it then retaliates with a Horrid Wilting.

Aiden: Can I turn her over, see if she’s dead?
Aliarra: It’s not doing 113 points of damage to me on a save!
Hanzo: Oh, like YOU couldn’t put those kind of numbers together, as a PC.
Aiden: Quick, Hanzo, close your book and stand up really fast.
Aliarra: I could, but it would take an attack roll…
DM: With the half, you’ll take 27 points of damage.
Aiden: Ha! She laughs it off. ‘All vile damage.’ She doesn’t quite laugh that off.

Ehlorra can do little, so holds her action. Pan’s turn comes up, and the group spends a bit catching him up (as usual). The elf that was with Denelos takes to the air and hurls lighnting.

Aliarra: I ought to open up the Mind of Kalroth and just suck this guy in…
Cissy: This fight SUCKS…

Aliarra blows her trip attack something fierce, then delivers much better on the second one and takes the izual down again. Ignir and Mrrshala hold their actions, lacking any way to attack at the moment.

Aiden: I have noted that you would like to prefer the regular healing method, and not the patented “Aiden Special”.
DM: Ignir says, “Get the special. It’s good.”
Pan: And what’s the special?
DM: A nice, hearty groping.
Aiden: Aiden does not care, apparently…
DM: Man or woman, he’ll do either.
Aiden: 49 points healed to you.
Cissy: Ignir got 50!
Aiden: If she had taken the special…
Mrrshala: I have no one to blame but myself.

Cissy lobs yet another lightning bolt, while in the background Aiden rolls up a character by the method “d6 x d4”, to ridiculous effect. The lightning bolt explodes the izual!

DM: All that is left is a jagged crystal shard on the ground.
Aiden: Your Int is down to 2, you can’t talk!
DM: All of a sudden the white izual moves up and grabs the shard. Anyone try to stop him?

Silence.

DM: Anyone trying to stop him?
Aliarra: Yes! I’ll trip him!
DM: He is holding his hand up while he does it.

Silence.

Mrrshala: “Can you TALK?!”
DM: He looks up at you, and in Draconic, it says, “May only the creator controls us. Set me free.”
Cissy: “ATTACK IT!”
Aiden: No!
Cissy: What?
Aliarra: I roll a 15 to attack Cissy…

Hanzo translates, Aliarra consults the book, and sadly Cissy proves to be right. The group wails on the unresisting izual until it bursts into a second crystal shard. Aiden offers Denelos some healing.

DM: “I am just fatigued. Many spells were cast. Including me having to tap into some of the magical power…”
Aiden: “It seems like based on the corpses we have over here, you killed some izual too.”
DM: “Yes, we encountered a few ourselves.”
Aiden: Oh wow, I see, you think you’re special because you killed two and we only killed one…
Aliarra: Yeah, I kind of think that too! This sucks! All the buildup of, “No one can defeat the izual, there’sh no weaknesshes to them, no mortal –“ So now we’ve got what, three down?
Aiden: Has he surpassed Golbez in annoying yet? Huh?
Aliarra: No, because he can do the smoking thing, and that earns him points.

The group speculates on the presence of the izual, the nature of the izual, and which izual had been defeated or might be involved. Aliarra comes to a horrible conclusion.

Aliarra: I disbelieve.
Hanzo: What are you disbelieving?
Aliarra: EVERYTHING.
Aiden: Natural 20, the world slips through your grasp as you fall endlessly into empty space.
DM: Are you trying to disbelieve Denelos is Denelos?
Aliarra: I disbelieve EVERYTHING. Just in case we’re all snared by the izual of Illusion. Just in case. I don’t actually expect it to be true, but just in case.
DM: I had toyed with that…
Aiden: There is no world below you.
Aliarra: I petition a GM to get myself unstuck.
DM: Nothing seems out of place.
Aliarra: Just checking. Of course there’s also the fact that Ehlorra still has her True Sight up. The poor izual of Illusion is just going to be undone by that. …although it’s also possible that Ehlorra was replaced in our illusion as well. She’s staring at our vacant, drooling corpses. “Wake up! Wake up!” “Everything is wonderful… we defeated Necromancy…”
Aiden: Are we in the Matrix?

Denelos requests the crystal, which sparks another idea.

Aliarra: “Denelos, is it possible to teach the spell that you just used to Pan?”
DM: “He would have to become an archmage.”
Aliarra: “Pan, get to work on that. It would be better if we could fight an izual without having to depend on your support…”
Hanzo: Heh heh, stop being meta.
Aliarra: That’s not meta, that’s completely legitimate!

Denelos explains that it was just the magnitude of damage that slew the izual, prompting a bitter outburst from Aliarra about how she’d been right all along. Cissy rolls Spellcraft to determine he cast Time Stop followed by repeated fireballs. Aliarra attempts to Intimidate his secrets out of him. Denelos lampshades that they are not fighting the izual at full strength, and they wonder if the izual are holding back out of a distaste for being controlled by Drek’thelar. The game wanders off on a long tangent about haggling in stores.

DM: Anybody have any question for Denelos while he’s still here?
Aliarra: “How’s it going, Denelos?”
DM: “All right.”
Hanzo: Where can we find another one of these to kill?
DM: “Unfortunately, their whereabouts are hard to pinpoint.”
Aliarra: “Can you give us an update on the army?”
DM: “They’re still in marching order.”

A phone makes a distinct Moogle noise. This breaks the players.

Aiden: That’s all his elf friend decided to say!
DM: “Oh of course, pardon my rudeness! This is Lan’veylan.”
Aliarra: Didn’t we meet Lan’veylan?
DM: He mentioned him before.
Mrrshala: It’s Aiden’s dad!
Aiden: Another dad…?

The game pauses for a bit while characters contemplate prestige classes and Legolas makes it clear where, precisely, the hobbits are being taken to. Hanzo waxes eloquent as to why Nicolas Cage is inferior to Mel Gibson. In fact, Hanzo is full of opinions.

Hanzo: It’s D&D. D&D hates its players, so there has to be a drawback. Unless you’re a druid, then D&D loves you.
DM: Not in 2nd Edition…

They loot the place, and get much wealth, along with items that they blatantly attempt to sell to Denelos for their value.

Pan: Any awesome hunter loot for the wizard? My character whips out a bow and a boar and starts killing everything.
Cissy: Cissy doesn’t murder people and destroy them out of anger, she does it because she likes it.
Aliarra: Yeah, that makes it so much better…
Cissy: And when they do something impressive, like that samurai who slices my orb in half, she wasn’t angry at him. She was really impressed. And she wanted to keep attacking him because that’s what she does. She’s like Goku. If you shoot Android 17 with a Kamehameha and he absorbs it, you shoot him with 10xKamehameha….
Aliarra: She uses the Cissy-Ken.

A pair of debates erupts simultaneously, about SR vs. resistance and prestige classes, and it all sounds like Chip and Dale babbling at each other except much, much deeper. Aliarra proposes they get out of the minotaur village.

Cissy: I’m gonna ask Denelos to get us out of here.
Aliarra: He’s got other things to do.
Hanzo: Oh! Wasn’t too busy to one-shot our boss, but he’s too busy to spirit us away…

They vote to travel one foot less than Hanzo is able to walk. Hanzo demands to be carried by Ignir.

DM: (poorly singing) “And Iiiiiiiiii….”

Aliarra is declared to have breeder’s hips, which gets the conversation in a really weird direction.

Aliarra: You’d be trying to get me to breed if I was 5’2” and thin as a board, and the mighty skull of my son will smash his way through my pelvis.
Aiden: You guys imagine whenever the conversation comes up about an heir, I’m just like… (making not-very-subtle noises and preening to draw attention to himself)
DM: “I’m not diseased any more, come on! Look, just because I gave it up doesn’t mean I don’t still want it!”

Back onto the sled they go, although Cissy wants to burn the bodies – because she wants to burn then, although she claims it’s to stop them from coming back. They travel till night, then set up camp, cracking jokes about demon-repelling runes all the way.

Aliarra: “I’m going to sleep well tonight.”
Mrrshala: I won’t, because as soon as the goddamn cat starts scratching at 5 in the morning it’ll wake me up.
Aliarra: I meant in-character!
Mrrshala: I am the lightest sleeper—
Aliarra: In-character, Mrrshala!
Mrrshala: Shut up. Fuck you.
Aiden: In-character she also has a pet cat, duh. Bubbus. She’s been with the adventure the entire time. The DM knows about Bubbus.
Aliarra: She’s in horse-space.
DM: She was the Bag of Holding. Unfortunately the air ran out a long time ago…
Mrrshala: I have two cats. Me, and my pussy.

Silence.

Cissy: Wooooooooow.
Aiden: (howling in helpless mirth, then just walking off)
DM: Your dreams…
Aliarra: We have that weird dream with the guy who stares at us?
DM: (shooting Aliarra an indescribable look) You see a pair of eyes in your dreams. This is a short one, at least. The picture in your mind goes to the crystals you have gathered so far. Fanfare and cheers go off, and you wake up a moment later. In the middle of the night.

Paying little introspection to this dream, they go back to sleep and resume their journey the next day, and for several more days. At the end of the fourth day, they see a solid grey wall of fog off in the distance! Ignir identifies them as the Shadowlands, though he knows not what the inside is like. Aliarra and Dian quote Transformers at each other, as they have been all night. This close to danger, they elect for double watches.

DM: You all wake up. Everybody’s dead!
Hanzo: Uh, then we don’t wake up. Oh wait, we all stabilized.
DM: Whoever rolls the highest lives and gets to witness everybody’s death.
Aiden: What happened?
Aliarra: We’re each rolling a die, and whoever rolled the highest lives.
Cissy: Wait, what kind of die?
Aliarra: (in the middle of rolling a d100,000) SHUT UP!
DM: You all take your watches, and though the night is eerie as hell because of the ominous mist in front of you, nothing happens. In the grey morning, dawn breaks in a clouded sky.

For some reason, Hanzo pictures Ignir with a bindle. This leads to a blues song. Really.

Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) Forgot me again!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) They left me behind!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) And now I’m sitting here!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) On my bovine behind!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) I just wanna fight!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) Wanna make an attack!
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) But maybe it’s not the bad guys…
Hanzo and Aiden: Moo moo, moo moo!
Aliarra: (singing) But my friends I should smack. I got the NPC… blu-u-u-u-u-ues….

They break camp. Aliarra’s NPCs are particularly nervous in the face of the mist, so Aliarra proclaims she will enter it first.

Hanzo: It’d be great if they were minotaurs, because then they’d be moo-mooks.

The PCs spend a bit debating their course of actions, although the timeline gets particularly strange t this point. Ignir tells them the mist just appeared, while Aliarra mutters about the Sha of Pride in the background. They question its purpose, speculating what might happen if the wall failed entirely and released whatever it might be containing. They reach the wall an about before sunset.

Cissy: I’m gonna fireball it.
Aiden: Can we just go out and search for the Holy Grail? Will that help us? Is there a Holy Grail in this world?
DM: Well, as soon as you step through the wall, you see an old man guarding a bridge.

Somehow Cissy restrains herself from lobbing spells like mad. Unwilling to go through this close to sunset, they set up camp again. On this ominous note, the game moves towards the end for the night…with Hanzo vigorously rewriting Ignir’s history to get some answers.

Hanzo: He’s an NPC, he knows everythiiiiiiiiing!
DM: A font of knowledge, he is.
Aliarra: But can he sees why kids love Cinnamon Toast Crunch?
DM: Next time, into the mist…
Aliarra: So we’re recruiting the local Hozen… while the minotaurs are recruiting the local jinyu…
Hanzo: Jinyu?!
Aliarra: Not Ginyu!
Hanzo: Recooooooooome!