At long last, the epic adventures of everyone but Cissy returns to the fore! The DM refreshes them on the current events: they had gone into a wall of fog and thence into a large building. Anticipating ADVENTURE!, the group assembles their minis veeery slowly and argue over Star Wars canonicity.

DM: Y’all may remember you entered a dark and mysterious realm after wandering through the fog. You had found a longhouse that may or may not have resembled something from a video game, fought some dark shadowy tendril-type beasts…
Aliarra: They were annoying. Really annoying.
DM: The only thing you discovered upstairs besides these creatures was a corpse with a wolf skeleton beside it. You had tried one door to the downstairs, which was barred.
Hanzo: Who’s a bard?
Aiden: It was locked from the other side.
Aliarra: And that makes it completely immune to everything.
Hanzo: Well I should roll a bard, I didn’t know they have that kind of immunities.
DM: And you had not tried the other side.
Aliarra: So it seems like we should try… the other side.
Cissy: “Sure. Let’s check it out.”

No one in the group responds to this.

Cissy: “Ha ha ha! Attica! Attica!”
DM: Not as grating but almost as annoying.
Aliarra: Not to me!
Cissy: Trying to remember.
Aliarra: Stop trying to remember!
Cissy: “WHEEEEHEEE!”
Aliarra: Aww, there it is! Noooo!
Cissy: “LET’S DO THIS!”
Aliarra: Noooooooooooo!

The DM begins drawing out the basement level, while Aiden grants Aliarra the rank of lieutenant for some reason.

Aliarra: I unjam it!
DM:With your foot?
Aliarra: 21, yes!
Cissy: You kicked it open! You haven’t done that in a while!
Hanzo: Oh, it’s Aliarra! Tripping machine.

Somehow the group begins discussing Cube 2: Hypercube. The DM draws out the whole map because Aliarra’s psion cohort has a psicrystal.

DM: It’s like floating meat with legs. Although that helped us find a trap.
Hanzo: You weren’t supposed to sacrifice pigs.
Aliarra: We were supposed to fall to our deaths.
Hanzo: You wouldn’t have died, unless whoever fell down there was left to their deaths.
Cissy: Unless it was Lars who fell down there, in which case we’d be like, ‘Ah, we’ll be down there eventually.’

They pile onto the map, and Aliarra immediately has her cohort manifest Detect Psionics.

DM: It begins!

Apparently what begins is the discussion of magic/psionics transparency and what exactly the manifestation picks up. It turns out to be… absolutely nothing. Pan delights in possessing a second attack next level, while the rest of the group imagines patrolling the area with 20 flaming spheres in orbit. Moving to the first room, Aliarra boots the door open!

Cissy: (plopping a giant dragon figure in the room) ‘You have entered my domain.’
Aliarra: (steps her mini back out the door, then mimes shutting it)

The DM draws two circles. The group immediately assumes they are wells and start dropping things down them.

DM: Across this table you see a skeleton with a dagger in his ribs. This table you see a man slumped down with a knife in his back. And another skeleton, nothing seems to be wrong with him. There is money! Dice! Littering the table.
Hanzo: Remains of a gambling night gone wrong!
Cissy: Hey, check out that dagger, is it worth anything?
Aliarra: Object Reading!
Cissy: ‘This man was stabbed in the back.’
Hanzo: Jeez, even Dark Souls storytelling couldn’t mess that up.
Aliarra: ‘This man are stabbed in rback’.
Hanzo: A winner is you.

Object reading comes up with several uninteresting facts, and one interesting one: the owner of the knife was good! Aliarra ponders this fact.

Aliarra: “What could drive a good man to murder?”
Cissy: “He’s chaotic!”
Aliarra: “That doesn’t mean he goes around killing people!”
Cissy: If they’re evil, he does.
Aliarra: Over dice!?
Cissy: If they’re evil!
Aliarra: Are the dice evil?
DM: Are you detecting evil?
Aliarra: I CAN’T DO THAT!
DM: Oh well, you’ll never know!
Aliarra: Do they have skulls on them?!
Cissy: I’m just saying, if this guy is evil, I don’t see why this chaotic good dude wouldn’t be like, “Fuck you!” (mimes stabbing)
Aliarra: D&D Russian Roulette? ‘Natural 1’. (sighs, then mimes stabbing herself)
Cissy: Here’s your wand! (spinning it)
Aiden: Natural 1’s the best roll, you have to click the gun that man times. ’20! I’m already dead!’

Hanzo searches and finds an empty bottle of POISON! They scoop up the gold. They move on to the next door, though Cissy goes on to the door after that for some godforsaken reason. Inside, they see a bed and a dresser! Aliarra immediately sticks her hand out and makes several gestures.

DM: You make a gesture and a grunt. They watch.
Aliarra: Huh. That’s odd. I don’t understand why my hand didn’t catch on to the back of the dresser so that I could push it forward and tip open the drawers. I must have been spatially unaware. Let me try again. (miming the same thing
DM: All right, you push the dresser. (whiny creaking noise)
Aliarra: MIMIC!
Cissy: It’s the unforeseen servant!
DM: It shakes and wobbles and breaks apart.
Aliarra: Damn.
Mrrshala: You broke it!
Hanzo: My lady’s undergarments.
DM: It was nice, too, you could have sold that.
Aliarra: It wasn’t that nice if it fell apart!

The transcriber steps out of the room and is promptly insulted by the group. They head into the next room, which remains resolutely crudely drawn – but this one has a chest in it! And apparently three monsters. Hanzo searches it, suspicious of traps! There are none. He attempts to unlock it!

Hanzo: …a 7.
DM: That is enough. I said simple.
Aliarra: What was it, a knot?! There’s a pushbutton. I rolled a natural 1. (miming pressing an object several feet to the right of her gaze)

The DM calls for rolls from the pair of them, inadvertently telling them they were Spot checks post-roll. Aliarra rolls great, but still not well enough to pass the check.

Aliarra; Welp, I’ve got a brain parasite now, guys.
DM: You march your way out. ‘Everything is fine.’
Aiden: Since I don’t remember your personality, that seems fine.

Hanzo takes a point of Con damage, and 2 for Aliarra, as two creatures surge out of the floor to attack them! Initiative ensues, followed by a fair amount of discussion over tower shield proficiency and when it is not needed to benefit. Hanzo has to wonder off to address his stuffed nose.

Cissy: I guess he’s the only one of us who is polite.
DM: Fuck you, get out.
Cissy: I DON’T NEED THIS! I’M LEAVING!
DM: Yaaay!
Aiden: Look, if I left every time I had to blow my nose, I might as well not blow my game tonight.

The players discover their nemesis is not a mimic, and are universally disappointed. Hanzo and Aliarra stubbornly insist they let out a cry of warning when attacked, so Mrrshala has a reason to come in the room. Mrrshala jams a pretzel rod in Aliarra’s mouth sideways. Mrrshala moves 20 feet towards the battle, is promptly reminded her movement is something like 50, and continues moving into melee. She fails the 50% chance incorporeality roll and does no damage to the ghost. Aliarra takes a 5-foot step and attacks!

Hanzo: Ah, the return of the 5-foot step.
Aliarra: I hit AC 18.
DM: That hits!
Aliarra: Did I pass the percentile check?
DM: Yes, you did, barely.
Aiden: I should just go in and do damage. I don’t have any offensive spells left. You think I should try turning them?
Aliarra: You probably can’t destroy them. Turning them might be a good way to get them to stop doing any more damage to us.
Aiden: If they’re really undead. I’m gonna try to turn them.

Aliarra does a shitton of damage with Elder Mountain Hammer and shuts down its AOOs. Aiden hunts for the turning rules and promptly rolls a natural 20 on his turning check. He turns a total of 20 HD of undead, and then realizes he has greater turning. One undead is subsequently nuked off the planet.

Aiden: “DENERIM!”
Aliarra: If you had rolled a natural 1 on your turn check: ‘DENIM!’
Aiden: Somewhere in the distance someone’s jeans shine brightly.
DM: Cissy goes!
Cissy: I’m gonna cast Persistent Blade! It is a super weak spell, but… it’s just a blade I summon, it does 1d4 points of damage forever. One round per level. I get a 50 foot range and then it moves 40 feet.
Aliarra: So congratulations, you put it into the wall. You can’t target it if you can’t see what you’re attacking.

Cissy fails to dodge LOS restrictions and with her movement of 15, can’t get anywhere. She decides to open a door to pull more mobs! Then decides to do nothing. Hanzo gets hauled into the air by tentacles, and both he and Aliarra get more Con slapped off them. Ehlorra deploys the standby of Entangling Ectoplasm.

Aliarra: That hits touch AC…
Aiden: Holy shit, I forgot what that was!
Aliarra: Remember that?
Aiden: In 5E that thing would have resisted turning and come back with 9 hit points…

Hanzo slips out of the grapple with an Escape Artist check. Pan contemplates lobbing a Storm Bolt at the undead, but drawing a line through the entire party doesn’t appeal.

Aliarra: You’re gonna have to use something else. Magic Missile is always good.
Pan: I’ll throw a Magic Missile since I can’t get a line for Storm Bolt.
DM: Damn force magic.
Aliarra: Incorporeal creatures HATE force magic!
DM: Yep. That’s probably why you suggested it.
Aliarra: (innocent whistling)

Aiden complains about Ghostbusters, then claims relevance because they are fighting ghosts and he busted one. Mrrshala steps up to deploy Ruby Nightmare Blade and promptly undersells her damage vastly, as she always does.

Aliarra: What about your Strength?!
Mrrshala: What ABOUT my Strength?!
Aliarra: What about the plus on your magical weapon?
Mrrshala: Okay, 16 points of damage.
Aliarra: That’s better.
Cissy: Nothing makes my wife happier than when I’m laying down to go to bed and I just fart up a storm.
DM: I don’t think happy is quite the word.
Cissy: Oh wait, disgusted, that’s the word I wanted.

Aliarra full-attacks, landing two attacks of three and using White Raven Tactics on Mrrshala. Aiden restores Hanzo’s lost Con. A weird discussion on harem anime occurs in the background. Hanzo burns ki and Ghost Steps, then Ghost Strikes, using a charge from his Deathstrike Bracers to be allowed to damage the undead with his sudden strike.

Hanzo: Like Charlie in Street Fighter 5. I’ll miss…
Aliarra: Your expending resources is KI to our success.
Hanzo: TOWER! Of power! Oh I have to confirm it…

Whether or not the undead can be crit with Deathstrike Bracers is raised and takes some debate to resolve. This only gives Aliarra more time to think.

Aliarra: Actually I should say that expending to our resource to get all those extra damage dice is KI to our SIXcess.
Aiden: Oh god damn it Aliarra.
DM: Ki and six, I hate you.

While Hanzo rolls his epic number of damage dice, Aliarra produces an old-school Trypticon figure and declares it to be the Tiamat miniature. Aiden immediately begins calculating its size – 50’ by 30’ on the 5mm scale – and they discuss if this is plausible.

Hanzo: Does it have more that 30 hit points left?
DM: No.
Hanzo: Oh it’s way gone then. I did Charlie Critical Art on it. Totally worth two ki points.

Aiden whips out the Restoration to heal Aliarra’s 7 Con damage, while the group mocks Cissy for doing nothing. Somehow the discussion turns to stripping.

Pan: Did I hear something about someone taking off a shirt?
Cissy: YES!
Aiden: (singing) It’s getting hot in here (so hot) so take off all your clothes!
Pan: So if it’s getting cold, I should say she should put more clothes on?
Aiden: (singing) It’s getting cold in here (so cold) so put on all your clothes!
Cissy: It’s getting cold in here so… putyournakedbodyagainstmeandwe’lluseourbodyheattowarmup….
Aliarra: That was a bit long-winded.

They find a wolf headdress in the chest, and a quick check with the Mind of Kalroth verifies that it is is magical. Also the DM gives Aliarra a dirty look for that.

Aiden: ‘I don’t work that way, asshole.’
Aliarra: ‘You used to!’
Aiden: ‘Fuck you.’

The book proclaims the headdress too large to identify, though – no matter their efforts to wedge it in. Aliarra threatens to get a polymorph cast on the Mind to make it larger. Aliarra reluctantly agrees to try it on once Aiden reveals he has Break Enchantment memorized.

Aiden: I put it on. It’s like, ‘finally.’ Greater Wolfskin Hat of X-Ray Vision, DM. ‘It does nothing, guys.’ ‘Aiden, why ya watching me?’ ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Later that night: ‘AAAH! You son of a bitch!!’ That’s some good bone structure.
Aliarra: The Greater Wolfskin Hat of Unsexy X-Ray Vision.
Aiden: Reverse beer goggles!
Aliarra: Cursed!
Aiden: For me, all the cat women turn into horrible dog women.
Aliarra: The DM’s looking up WAY too much stuff on this headdress for my taste.
DM: I’m just curious what would happen if you tried it on.
Aliarra: I’m not trying it on any more, guys.
Aiden: Yes you are! You’re definitely doing it.

Aliarra does try it on, but nothing happens – they toss it on the loot list to identify later. They take a moment to chuckle over Aiden’s glove-lust and tripping that one guy out of his boots.

Aliarra: “Oh my God, where’s Cissy? Where’s Cis—Cissy! Cissy!”
Cissy: “Opening up a door.”
Aliarra: Did you just say that all quiet, because we didn’t hear a thing if you did. “All I know is Cissy has vanished from our sight, no one has seen Cissy, she is probably killing something or someone with fire. Find Cissy now.”
Hanzo: That headdress made you awfully authoritative.

Aliarra plunges off through walls with a monster in tow, while OOC they demand Cissy open the door so they can get through the dungeon. Cissy cheerfully invokes her ‘Lens of Bright Vision’ as letting her see, while having no idea what it does. Chances are she’s been stomping around in the dark this entire time. Aliarra proposes ‘Linus and Lucy’ as the appropriate music with which to dance over Cissy’s corpse.

Aiden: You’re a fucking monster.
Aliarra: (helpless laughter)
Aiden: I don’t know what to tell you.
DM: (cueing up the Jetsons vehicle take-off noise)
Hanzo: That’s a psicrystal jetting its way through the dungeon.
DM: That’s a GREAT noise for the psicrystal!

Cissy discovers the lens can project a cone of bright light. The lens is only half-effective thanks to the area’s suppressing effects.

DM: However, you do see inside the room… chaos. There is personal belongings strew about the entire place.
Aliarra: Aww, I was kinda hoping it was just raw chaos inside.
Hanzo: Like in Poltergeist.
Aliarra: And Cissy was like, ‘Eh, it’s nothing special!’

She steps in and looks about, seeing several bunk beds. Aliarra attempts to use Order Forged from Chaos, but that’s just a fancy maneuver name and forges no order from chaos. Cissy dives in to search and finds a trivial amount of copper and no useful identifying information. A huge debate over light erupts.

Aiden: Since we’re not sure if we have a torch or not, I’m going to go ahead and cast Light on the end of one of the torches. With Radiance, it doubles the effect of light…
DM: So it’s like a regular light spell. This room is much the same. Bunk beds, several belongings, dragging in the hallway…
Cissy: (mishearing and miming a dragon in the hallway)
DM: As you get closer to that end, Aliarra, you see what seems to be just a big old pile of earth.
Aliarra: Whoop! Pile of earth looks suspicious.
DM: It’s tapering down to the ground right here.
Hanzo: Use VATS.
Cissy: What am I rolling to look through the keyhole?
DM: Well you can’t really see, your light’s not shining through it.
Cissy: My bright vision goggles—
Aliarra: What’s the point of looking through the keyhole then?!
Cissy: I can still see seven and a half feet in front of me.
Aliarra: It’s not exactly SUBTLE!

Aliarra stabs the earth and nothing results, while Cissy starts yelling about things on the other side of the door. She promptly flings the door wide-open.

DM: The first thing that hits you is the smell. The smell of decay. The second thing your light hits is the humungous pile of bones inside the room.
Hanzo: Bones?
DM: Yes. Bones.
Hanzo: Bone?
DM: And several small slimes.
Aiden: Like Minecraft tiny spawns?
Cissy: FIREBALL! (a pause) Apparently no one stops me.
Aiden: I’m currently focused on the pie here, I don’t know why Aliarra isn’t stopping you.
Aliarra: What am I gonna do?
Pan: Something needs fireballed?
Aiden: No, you’re fine.
DM: Don’t get involved.
Cissy: I’m throwing a fireball right in the center of the room. 10d6 fireball.
Aliarra: Where are you targeting it?
Aiden: Just make sure you’re not in range.
Aliarra: Nope! Too late! She fireballed herself! You already called it!
Cissy: When they explode, how far out do they go?
Aliarra: It’s a 20 foot radius.
Cissy: 5, 10, 15, 20, I’ll put it right here.
Aiden: You said right in the middle of the room.
Cissy: Can I do this? Can I lean around the corner and –
Aiden: STOP DOING THIS! Just put it five feet further in!

Cissy blasts the pile, with no real effect, then tries to argue that now she can see better. The DM disallows this.

Cissy: So it was just a flash.
DM: It was an instant.
Aliarra: It was just a flash. Ah-ah-ah!
Hanzo: You’ll save every one of us!
DM: No she won’t. Some people just love to watch the world burn. That’s Cissy.
Aliarra: No, she wants to CAUSE the world to burn.
Cissy: She’s Chaotic Neutral, she doesn’t care either way.
Hanzo: This dungeon deserves a better kind of monster… and I’m gonna give it to them.
Cissy: Anybody else want to catch up?
Aliarra: To what?! There’s nothing left! You maniac! You blew it up! Damn you! Damn you all to hell!

Cissy attempts to loot the room, and unsurprisingly comes up blank. She shrugs this off as expected and heads back to the group.

Aiden: “What was that, Cissy?”
Cissy: I said I shut the door behind me.
Aiden: No, I was asking about the boom we heard not a moment ago.
Cissy: “Nothing! Nothing you should worry about!”
Aiden: I’m sorry I have to do this. You feel as my hands grasp around you for a moment. Then nothing. You look down. You see – a childproof harness.
Cissy: A leash.
Aliarra: Aiden would never do that because it would decrease HIS speed to 15.
Aiden: It has a slight hovering effect.

The longhouse is cleaned out now, and the group debates the merits of resting to recover here. They do another sweep for magic and furiously try to interpret the DM’s subtle cues.

DM: I said ‘are you leaving or are you searching further?’. I’m not hinting anything, I’m just asking what you guys are doing.
Aliarra: If I gave that answer you guys would get pissed!
Cissy: Out the door!
DM: As you leave the building, not exactly sure where to go from here, Ignir greets you.
Hanzo: Ignir! Tell us where to go.
DM: “A green light had appeared on the horizon.” You look, and you do see a speck.

Redacted: a racist joke.

Mrrshala: Don’t forget, he’s Irish and Mexican!
DM: And gay.
Aliarra: I NEVER forget that part. Especially not late at night.
DM: Took the words right out of my mouth.
Cissy: You know, Mrrshala was gone for a long time…
Aiden: Who lost the last game of homophobe chicken?
Aliarra: I feel like it was Drusila.

Aliarra segues into an angry rant about how she can’t find a sound effect of just Gloop and Gleep from the Inhumanoids on YouTube, vowing to someday find and put up a 10 hour loop of them. The group trudges towards the light, at last approaching a lone figure swathed in robes and furs and holding a long staff. Aliarra mimes looking through binoculars.

Aiden: You’re not Barack!
DM: He holds a long staff, and on top of it you see a green glow.
Cissy: Some call me… Tim?
Hanzo: Oh mighty Tim!
Aliarra: Can we tell anything else at this distance?
Cissy: “HIIIIII!”
Aliarra: “Someone muffle her.”
Aiden: I immediately hit option 2 on the leash.
Aliarra: Clairvoyant Sense! She can see and hear a distant location as if she were there.
DM: She sees a grizzled old man, blindfolded. And as soon as the vision creeps up on him, he turns, as if he were facing her.
Aliarra: That’s fine, it does create a sensor, so that’s not surprising.
Aiden: He reaches through and begins to choke her. ‘That’s fine, it does create a two way gate for choking.’
Aliarra: Only choking.
Hanzo: Don’t talk to him, that’ll start the cutscene.
Aliarra: All right, look for a boulder so we can clip through the floor and get around him that way.
Aiden: He’s probably going to say, “Ho ho ho! Thanks for getting the Staff of the Magi for me!”
Aliarra: What? That doesn’t even make any sense!
DM: Does Ehlorra end her spell?
Aliarra: Yes.
DM: The moment she does, the man is standing there with you, as if he trailed back with her.
Aliarra: All right, use Clairvoyant Sense on the moon and send him there.
DM: “Good evening.”
Aliarra: GET HIM!
Cissy: Cissy, once again. “HI OLD MAN!”
DM: “Greetings, small one. I… am the guide.”
Cissy: “Ooooooh!”
Mrrshala: ‘What does this button do?’
Aliarra: ‘No, Cizsy, no! Do not push dhe button!’
Cissy: High Intelligence, no Wisdom.
Aiden: (apropos of nothing) I’m really surprised you don’t have Despicable Me.
Cissy: “Guide? Guide to what?”
DM: “I am here to take you where you need to go. I can sense that you have payment.”
Hanzo: Payment? Coins at a rise. Easy money! Oh he wants all the copper than we found there!
Aiden: Do we need dead-man coins? What were the coins you need to cross the River Styx.
Aliarra: Two coins on the eyes.
Cissy: It was drachma.
Aliarra: ‘HOW many pieces of silver? Uh-oh.’
Hanzo: 30? 30 pieces?
DM: “I have no use for coin.”
Cissy: ‘Aliarra’s weapon? Okay!’
Hanzo: “What do you ask for recompense?”
DM: “An item that once belonged to me.”
Hanzo: Cissy’s Rod of Persist Spell. And Krixxix’s shortbow.
Aiden: Aiden’s libido.
Aliarra: (miming producing something from her backpack) Eh?
DM: What’re you pulling out?
Aliarra: Wolfskin headdress.
DM: There ya go. “Payment accepted.”
Hanzo: He wanted…?
Cissy: “Out of curiosity, what was that thing?”
Aliarra: It was his once.
Hanzo: Did you use your psionic thing on the headdress?
Aliarra: No! I just used LOGIC!
Hanzo: No, I mean when we picked it up.
Aliarra: No!
Hanzo: Why didn’t you do that?!
Aliarra: ‘Cuz it went into the magic loot pile, not into the flavor text pile!
DM: ‘This is ours now!’
Aliarra: Yes!
Hanzo: It’s a good thing we were just down there or you would have probably gotten it yourself!
DM: “I wait for those who retrieve it, for they are the ones who need guidance.”
Aliarra: Thank god that whole dungeon wasn’t pointless.
Hanzo: It happened for a reason.
Aliarra: I lost all that Con for cause.
DM: He holds the headdress up high, and green flames wreathe around it.
Hanzo: ‘This is the work of gypsies!’

The party finds themselves following a ghost wolf, while struggling to deal with Cissy’s terrible movement rate. Cissy cackles over the combo of Cloudkill and Gust of Wind, infuriating Aliarra. After an hour of travel, they come upon another bank of fog.

DM: He waves his staff. Pushes you all out. You’re back on the ice. Suckers! No, he waves his staff and the fog parts, and you see a rough cobblestone road leading off into the distance. An old wrought-iron oul lamp stands, providing what actually looks to be normal light. You look back to say thank you or maybe see what he has to say, but he’s already gone.
Aliarra: “Thank you for your guiding.” I mentally add, “I hope.”
Cissy: “THANK YOU OLD-TIMER!”
DM: (guttural whisper) ‘Shut up…’
Cissy: Cissy is so nice, she’s the only one that says thank you and hello….
Aliarra: Did I not say thank you?! Did I not?!

Though it’s dark, light all returns to its normal levels, and they abruptly get surrounded by evil clowns.

Aiden: They’re doing flips! CIRQUE DU SOLEIL!
Aliarra: No, it is the Cirque du SLAY!

The party takes stock of themselves, debating whether or not they should rest for the night. Aiden does an elaborate mime of removing something from his chest and replacing it.

Aiden: Placed the restful crystal for my Iron Ward.
Aliarra: I’m like what kind of Tony Stark nonsense are you getting up to there?! You can’t just replaced your arc reactor and not need to sleep!
DM: He put that new element in there. “Oooh! AW YEAH!”
Aiden: Hey hey hey, that was all scientifically accurate, he can definitely make a particle accelerator in his house, and somehow power it to make a new element, and it lasts for longer than two nanoseconds.
Hanzo: Well, he made an arc reactor in a cave, with a pile of scraps. So if he actually had the resources he had at home…
Aliarra: Also he had Captain America’s shield down there.

The group gets to rolling Spot and Listen checks for their watches, mostly pointlessly – they hear wolves howling, and Mrrshala rolls a 8 for a Listen which no one can believe. And a 20 on Spot.

Hanzo: You see the howl of a wolf.
DM: You see the sound wave.
Aliarra: O O O O O.

They realize abruptly that the temperature is much warmer than it should be, and promptly begin preparing for the Savage Land. They continue on, still hearing the howls of wolves, and soon the keen-eyed begin seeing features on the edges of the forest.

Hanzo: Now would be a great time for one of those poorly-thought-out fireballs.
DM: Nope! Too late! Anyway you continue on!

After another hour of travel, they spot what looks to be a town on the horizon. They slap Cissy to disrupt her fireball-throwing concentration, so she switches to Knowledge(history), and of course comes up blank. Still desperate to act, she checks her sheet again.

Cissy: 19 on singing a song.
DM: The wolves attack.

The town looks to be akin to the longhouse in style and sophistication. Cissy and Aliarra debate which of them would get through a fight, which Aiden immediately declares to be whoever runs initiative first.

Aliarra: Rocket tag.
Mrrshala: Whoever gets initiative first? You know who that is? Hi.
Hanzo: We need a Nick Fury. We’re not a team, we’re a time bomb.
Aliarra: We better sign the accords.
Hanzo: You ARE our Scarlet Witch, you just level destruction unin—well, INTENTIONALLY.
Cissy: Excuse me while I send Vision to the core of the planet.
Aliarra: ‘You do this, they will never stop fearing you.’ ‘I DON’T CARE!’

In they head, with Mrrshalla and only Mrrshala hearing wolves. Three or four dozen of them promptly pop out and begin following the heroes. Aiden is apparently resolutely distracted by sideboob somehow. Aliarra speculates that they have a connection to wolf-headdress-guide.

Hanzo: Didn’t think about it that way. He could have said so. Like, “Don’t worry about the wolves you’re about to run into and whatever you do don’t destroy them.” They must be here to engage the chaff of the enemy mob we’re about to encounter, while we fight the named NPC.
Aliarra: Let’s not read anything too deep into it too quickly. “Let’s just keep moving, and trust everything will work out.”
DM: You make your way further in and you reach what you’d call a town square from this architecture. And here is where you stop, because ahead of you…. About twice as many wolves are ahead of you, sitting on their haunches.
Aliarra: Twice as many? We’re up to about a hundred wolves now…
Hanzo: That’s over a hundred.
Aliarra: Depends on how many there actually are.
Aiden: There’s only three dozen behind us.
Aliarra: 72 plus 36 is 108—
Hanzo: Suikoden!
Aliarra: Now if there’s 48 we’re up to 136?
DM: The wolves behind you don’t catch up right behind you, they’ve kind of created a semicircle around you, and they’re all sitting on their haunches.
Hanzo: Let’s sit down.
Aliarra: We’re gonna have a HOWLING good time!
Hanzo: Oh god.

The group starts attempting to communicate with emotes; Aliarra accidentally slow-claps. Suddenly a lone bark peals out, which starts them all going.

Hanzo: I don’t speak that. They’re all laughing at us.
Aiden: They’re all saying ‘gimme back my son’.
Cissy: Ka… Me…
Aliarra: (leans over and slaps Cissy)
Cissy: Ow.
DM: You look around and eventually you notice there’s one person sitting amongst them going, “Ruff! RAAUGH!” He watches as you look at him, and he’s like, “Argh – ooh, uh,” and he stands up. “Pardon me.”
Hanzo: Denelos!

The wolfish guy, not Denelos, welcomes them to the town of Randolfier. The DM reminds them of a story of a tribe of humans who had suddenly disappeared. He greets them! Aiden inquires about his town.

DM: “We are the last defense. We have been the last for over – what year is it?”
Aliarra: I tell him the year.
DM: “A very long time. But you’ve just walked through the shadowlands. You must be parched, hungry. Come! Come to my longhouse, let us feast.”
Hanzo: “Why are you the only person?”
DM: “I’m not.”
Aliarra: “The only human person.”
Hanzo: They’re lycanthropes!
DM: “There are others. You’ll see them soon.”
Hanzo: At night he turns into a wolf and they all turn into people?
Aliarra: They’re wolfweres! That’s a thing!
Hanzo: Wolfweres.
Aliarra: It’s a thing!

The PCs discover they’re subject of prophecy. Aiden imagines a hilariously specific prophecy.

Aiden: It describes each of us. Our worst qualities. A baron known only as barren. A man, enemy of all catkind.
Aliarra: Cissy. That’s all it has to stay.
Aiden: Destroyer of worlds.
Aliarra: Poison-man Hanzo, what evil he has wrought. Mrrshala, she was there too.
Mrrshala: Yeah, that’s all I get.
DM: As the wolves have dissipated, a few remain to walk alongside you. And he says, “Me? I am Rrokath.”

With the PCs surely doomed, the game ends here – awaiting their next adventure.