Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hey Al Hey Barry,
Speaker 1 00:00:03 What tabletop role-playing game does Karl Marx play
Speaker 2 00:00:07 Like game? I
Speaker 1 00:00:09 Mean, it's just the Indy, but he disabled the class system. It's time for compelled dual
Speaker 3 00:00:15 <inaudible>. Hello
Speaker 1 00:00:28 Everybody. And welcome back to compelled dual I'm
Speaker 0 00:00:30 Barry and I'm Al and
Speaker 1 00:00:32 We are a single player. <inaudible> actual play podcast
Speaker 0 00:00:38 Previously on compelled duel.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 There are these big, uh, permanent teleportation circles, I suppose, is the way to put it. And there's one in this Fri files and it's in pro court. Huh? That sounds like tomorrow's doorstep. Back it up, back it up. Who's Sabine. You met her in the nightclubs. She tried to cast vicious mockery on you. Oh, oh my God fee. Also again, she is the captain's wife. They're separated. Oh my God. Fi the
Speaker 1 00:01:15 Wind is blowing. Thunder is roaring.
Speaker 2 00:01:19 The ship is
Speaker 1 00:01:21 Pitching back and forth. Very precariously.
Speaker 2 00:01:26 I'll get inside in a minute. The mass is about to go down and I, and she hacks at one of the ropes and just yells up at the sky, do not hacks in another rope except this. And you watch as a lightning bolt comes out of the sky and just hits her dead on. And she goes down like a sack of bricks. What does that mean? She does not get the chance to do any death saves. She is automatically dead as she hits the deck. You killed me. So you could give me some vague cryptic bullshits about the importance of family. My family is on that ship.
Speaker 1 00:02:06 When something as insurmountable as overcoming death
Speaker 2 00:02:10 Is on the table, sometimes
Speaker 1 00:02:13 The best thing any of us can do is trust our brother. I pull Kim rolls blade out of its holster, and I hold the broken portal key to her chest. I shake her by the shoulders and say,
Speaker 2 00:02:31 No, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 4 00:02:33 Hey, look at me. You, you don't get to leave me. You don't get to leave me and I cash for Vivify
Speaker 2 00:02:52 Leo. It is the day after we left off. It's the first time there's been kind of a moment of calm since the battle. So the crew are handling funeral arrangements for the people that died on the Assurion ship. You kind of don't really get everything that's going on. First of all, it's not like a Cherian funeral practices. And also there's a lot of kind of religious ceremony that you don't really understand. Doc is reading passages out of the book. Everybody's just kind of watching six or seven members of the crew went down during that Naval combat. And they are all just kind of lined up in boxes on the deck. The rest of the crew and the entire crew of the Moray are just kind of arrayed in a semicircle. There's a lull of silence. And from a few people down the line, you just hear you clap a hand over her mouth boots, just like instantly reaches out and hugs her very close to the chest. The boxes are weighted down, pushed off the side of the boat in the ocean. Everybody take a second and then slowly starts to disperse.
Speaker 0 00:04:26 Uh, what are you doing? Staying as far
Speaker 1 00:04:29 The hell out of the way as I can while still being respectful.
Speaker 0 00:04:32 Um, where is fi is she still resting? She also felt it would be more respectful to come out on deck, but like she is still operating under several levels of exhaustion. She could not get out of bed. So you just kind of left her there and then went, okay, cool. I'm going to go try to find the captain. Captain's not hard to find as everyone disperses. He kind of takes a second and just sits on the upper deck by the wheel. He definitely, for sure has a flask in his hand and it's just taking a long swig out of it as the cop. He raises it to you and says, yeah, you, uh, mind if I get a nip of that, he pauses for a second, like he's thinking about it and then says, ah, fine. And then hands it to you.
Speaker 1 00:05:25 Leo takes a big old pole out of the flask and then nods down towards the door of the captain's quarters.
Speaker 0 00:05:32 She's awake. She's well, not fine, but lucid. Right. That's good to hear. He kind of like tilts his head and he says would have been a shame to disturb her, but I do have to write some letters to the families, Leo winces
Speaker 1 00:05:52 And just stares down at where the coffins were on the deck a minute ago. And the nods to himself,
Speaker 0 00:06:00 No more of this. The captain's face goes very still and very hard and set, and he takes another long swig out of the flask. And he says, we're agreed on that. Well,
Speaker 1 00:06:14 Now that I have access to, and he raises a hand and just kind of does a controlled, sacred flame in it, and then clenches his fist to extinguish it certain abilities again, I think it'll help give us an edge, but it does leave me with a couple of questions. First of all, what's our next step. We took a lot of damage. I don't think we can limp to Pearl port
Speaker 0 00:06:36 Like this. I know we'll have to stop the next island. We hit and hope it's inhabited so we can get some supplies. He kind of nods back towards where the rest of the crew are. And he says, Ascot can pretty well handle for repairs, but he needs to have tools for it, which leads me to my next
Speaker 1 00:06:57 Point, which is that I need tools to be able to do what I do as well. Only other magic user on the ships Pelican,
Speaker 0 00:07:04 Right? I, uh, a couple of members of career can do little things, but nothing so impressive as either of you I'll ask
Speaker 1 00:07:13 Pelican. If he has anything that I need that I can borrow, but I somehow doubt it. His, uh, he waves vaguely up in the rigging at
Speaker 0 00:07:22 Where Pelican is. His, uh,
Speaker 1 00:07:24 Whole thing is a little antithetical to clerical magic.
Speaker 0 00:07:28 I think, well, that's a nice way of putting it. I usually just say, it's batshit crazy captain.
Speaker 1 00:07:35 There's not anything going on anywhere around any of us anymore. That's
Speaker 0 00:07:40 Not bat shit crazy. So if
Speaker 1 00:07:43 Pelican doesn't have what I need, I was wondering if I could pick through some of the things we confiscated from the Australian
Speaker 0 00:07:50 Ship. My particular
Speaker 1 00:07:52 Brand of magic is stronger than that. Of most of the people in Australia that
Speaker 0 00:07:58 Use it, but it is common. So there might be some
Speaker 1 00:08:01 Spell components stashed away, and the supplies we were able to confiscate. I know pirates have the whole division of loot thing. I wouldn't want to step on any toes with that,
Speaker 0 00:08:11 But if I
Speaker 1 00:08:13 Can find things that I need to be able to prevent this sort of situation from happening again,
Speaker 0 00:08:19 I think that maybe I should get pregnant. I am part of the screw you're entitled to your share. And then he waved the hand. He says, usually let Paladin get first pick. Anyway, I know, spell castings a bit techy. I go find Pelican pelicans up in the rigging. He usually is, if you would stop under a mask and like wave that you would like to talk to him, he drops out. Hey
Speaker 1 00:08:47 Pelican. I was just wondering if you had some spell components I could borrow now that I've got a little bit of my back I'm in the market. First supplies,
Speaker 0 00:08:59 The bird says, ah, yes, let me show you to my supplies. And then he just walks off out of the deck. Leo lets him get
Speaker 1 00:09:10 A couple paces ahead. Whispers. I'm going to regret this and then follows him.
Speaker 0 00:09:16 You have never been for obvious reasons in boots and pelicans little apartment. It is strange. It's furnished very simply. There's just like a bed, a chest of drawers. There's a big mirror in the corner, but it is covered now as most of the mirrors on the ship are, since everybody died in combat, Pelican opens the chest of drawers and just rummages around and pulls out a big box. You, as he is doing that, notice that there is a big cobweb, just in a corner with a spider, just scaring around on it, that the bird goes up to and just kind of looks at Pelican, just haul this box out of the chest of drawers, closes, it, puts it on the lid and then opens it up and pulls out a couple of bottles. There's a jar full of seeds. There's one that have like what looked like some kind of bug legs. He has like a little bag of just charcoal that he pulls out. And then a big jar of what looked to be at tentacles floating in some kind of brine. He turns back to you and blinks. And the bird says is any of this abuse to you? Um, are those octopus legs pickled? Yes.
Speaker 1 00:10:46 I think I'm going to go look down in the hold. Thank you, Pelican. And Leo turns around and leaves
Speaker 0 00:10:51 The bird calls after 70, a little bit miffed suit yourself. Yeah. I'd like to go down to the hole. I'm going to go
Speaker 1 00:11:05 Look through some of the chests that we confiscated from the history area and ship, because I don't need any of that.
Speaker 0 00:11:11 Nobody has really been through all of the confiscated loot. None of it is really sorted out into like Zandra's of stuff. It's kind of just all thrown in there. Can I just tell you, well,
Speaker 1 00:11:28 You, as the DM things that I need or things that I would like to find and then
Speaker 0 00:11:34 Sure, okay. I have a grocery list.
Speaker 1 00:11:39 I need diamonds for revivify spells. So a hundred gold piece for each of, of if I smell that I could break off. So however many diamonds I could find,
Speaker 0 00:11:49 I need at
Speaker 1 00:11:50 Least 200 gold worth of powdered for a couple of different
Speaker 0 00:11:54 Spells. I need at
Speaker 1 00:11:56 Least 25 gold worth of incense for another
Speaker 0 00:12:00 Smell. And
Speaker 1 00:12:02 I remembered that I fucked up when I did that scrying spell last episode, because I'm supposed to have a scrying focus worth at least a thousand gold pieces that can be a mirror or a crystal ball or a font full of holy water or any other kind of expensive, magical, reflective thing, I guess,
Speaker 0 00:12:22 Lipsey. So
Speaker 1 00:12:24 We're just going to say that the captain had a really nice mirror in his room and I just used that.
Speaker 0 00:12:30 But if
Speaker 1 00:12:30 I intend to cast that spell again, I do need to get a scrying focus. So I am looking for all of those. And I'm guessing I'm just going to have to roll something to see how much, if anything, I can find
Speaker 0 00:12:44 Either investigation or Arcana, whichever one you'd like, okay,
Speaker 1 00:12:48 Well I get the same modifier for both of those. So flavor
Speaker 0 00:12:51 Wise, let's just say it's Arcana 17 on the dye. Plus three, dirty 2020 was what you needed to get. At least one of all of the things that you've requested. You do not get repeats of any of the components that you needed, but you managed to find 25 gold pieces worth of incense. You managed to find about 200 gold pieces worth of powdered silver. You find one diamond that you think you could Castro Vivify with. And as you open up one of these chests, your eyes immediately go to a perfectly round, perfectly smooth crystal ball, about six inches across that instantly reminds you of being a kid that in watching your mother use divination magic and especially scrying, Leo
Speaker 1 00:13:43 Grabs all of the other supplies, tucks them away into his hip pouch, and then really carefully picks up the crystal ball. If there's a cloth in there with it, which there should
Speaker 0 00:13:53 Be. He remembers
Speaker 1 00:13:55 That his mom taught him to never directly touch a crystal ball unless you're scrying
Speaker 0 00:13:59 With it. And just really gently
Speaker 1 00:14:01 Picks it up and holds it and looks at it for a really long time
Speaker 0 00:14:06 And folds it up in the cloth and puts it in his bag.
Speaker 5 00:14:12 Since you've got that 20, just barely as you lift this crystal ball, you see under it in the chest, there is this wide strip of black leather. The tooling on it is very interesting. It is burnished and shiny, but tooled into it is a pattern that looks almost like feathers or scales or something. You look at it and you are filled with a certainty that you want this. Yeah, but the thing about Leo is that he doesn't trust what he wants anymore. Can I Arconic check it to see if it's going to curse me roll Arcana 12. It doesn't seem like it's going to curse you. Okay, cool. I pick it up, take a look at it. It is again, just this burnished black leather Bracer. You were looking at kind of the over side of it. As you pick it up, you notice it has laces on the underside, so you can tighten it around your arm.
Speaker 5 00:15:27 And on the side of it, there is this big kind of rough chunk of amethyst, mostly flat against the surface of it, but raised a little bit from the side. What would I need to do to just kind of fuck around with this and see what it is attuned to it with that Arcata check. It is definitely magical, but you get the feeling that you would need to attune to it, to figure anything else out. Okay, cool. I'm going to pack up all of my other stuff and then go sit in the hallway outside of the hold and attuned to this thing. Absolutely. You just sit out in the hallway for an hour with it. You get the feeling that the enchantment of it
Speaker 0 00:16:17 Is focused on this gemstone set into the side.
Speaker 5 00:16:21 Okay. I'm going to fiddle with the gem. Do you have Kimberly's blade on you? Yeah, always it's in its sheath at my belt. As you run your fingers over the chunk of amethyst, the weight of it disappears from your belt. Oh fuck me. Leo stands up and yells. This is bad. Yep. Your knife is no longer on your belts. You still got this breakthrough in your hands. I slap at the gym again, trying to undo whatever the fuck it is. I just did you slap at the gym with one hand? And in your other hand, Kimball's blade appears again. Leo holds onto it with a vice grip for a couple seconds, breathing very heavily and then slowly blinks and goes, huh? I'm going to push the jam again. Life's gone. I push it again. It's back in your hand. Oh, that's sick as hell. I put the Bracer on and place it up. And then I'm going to go check on fi
Speaker 1 00:17:39 Fi you are transferring for most of the next day. There are fleeting moments of lucidity times that you wake up and your brother is there. There's a moment where you wake up and have a brief discussion about the fact that they are outside on the deck, doing funeral services for the people that perished in the fight with the Australian pirates. You try to get up out of bed, figure out very quickly that you can't not. And Leo agrees to go for both of you.
Speaker 0 00:18:08 Not long after
Speaker 1 00:18:09 He leaves to go do that. You pass out
Speaker 0 00:18:11 Again. And
Speaker 1 00:18:13 In all of these times when you are semi-conscious and trancing, you are dreaming and your dreams are just wild.
Speaker 0 00:18:22 You
Speaker 1 00:18:23 Dream of purple-ish greenish skies and impossibly tall buildings that glow like mirrors, reflecting
Speaker 0 00:18:32 The sun, you dream
Speaker 1 00:18:35 Of a mountain top in a blizzard and the sound of a battering Ram hammering at the door of a temple.
Speaker 0 00:18:44 And then right
Speaker 1 00:18:45 After this brief moment where you're awake and have this conversation with Leo, where he leaves you fall back into you're trans and you dream of a very quick succession of visions. You see the expansive docs of a port town that is just totally on fire. All of the buildings, all of the docs
Speaker 0 00:19:12 Burning. There are
Speaker 1 00:19:14 Terrified people running around. If you stop long enough to look at them, you can see that they're all storm folk and you see shadows moving on the ships that are Morde to the sides of the docks. And you hear a voice saying, what will you do? And then the vision crashes out of your consciousness and you are in another one,
Speaker 0 00:19:41 You are
Speaker 1 00:19:42 Standing on the prowl of a ship facing down a line of opposed ships that are off in the distance. There is a massive storm rolling in
Speaker 0 00:19:53 Overhead and something
Speaker 1 00:19:55 In your gut tells you just how outnumbered you are and a voice in your head says, and then the vision crashes out of your head and you are sucked into another one. You are standing on a black sand beach, looking out to a horizon that is illuminated by burning ships on the shores. Next to you. You hear the clash of steel on steel and see blood in the waves, washing up over your feet. There are people around you fighting people, you know, you see Colossae you see fan, you see friends of Leos, who you met briefly,
Speaker 0 00:20:44 And a voice in your head says what bill you did.
Speaker 1 00:20:51 And then that vision crashes out of your head and you are sucked immediately into another one. There is a sense of calm in this one. You are standing in what is very clearly a cave
Speaker 0 00:21:06 Along the
Speaker 1 00:21:07 Damp walls of stone. There are soft Aurora like light effects of greens and purples and grays and blues that are just flashing. Illuminating the scene. Before you,
Speaker 0 00:21:22 You are looking down at a table hewn
Speaker 1 00:21:27 Out of the stone of the cave itself
Speaker 0 00:21:29 And on the table to your right.
Speaker 1 00:21:33 There is a magnificent Mithril sword with an ornate leather wrapped grip. And to your left, there is a Mithril kite shield inscribed with a large bolt of lightning shooting across the
Speaker 0 00:21:48 Face. You look at these two items and then you look up and behind
Speaker 1 00:21:54 The table, there is a tall hooded figure wrapped in a stormy cloak
Speaker 0 00:22:01 With two bright points of electricity for eyes and they bright lightning bolt smile, Kiva reaches
Speaker 1 00:22:09 Out, grabs you by the chin and holds your gaze
Speaker 0 00:22:14 And says, what will you do? And you wake up with a jolt.
Speaker 1 00:22:23 As you come to back in the captain's quarters. Doc is hovering over you. She has her medical kit open on the bedside table. Next
Speaker 0 00:22:32 To you. She nods down at you and says Martin and sunshine. Can't
Speaker 1 00:22:37 Believe both of those LODs let you sleep all night and soaking wet clothes. You're like to got your death or, well, ah, that was insensitive. Wasn't it? And then she just keeps digging around it or medical
Speaker 0 00:22:48 Kit fee. Laughs just
Speaker 1 00:22:56 Doc's facial expression softens a little bit. And she smiles down at you and then very carefully reaches down under your head and tries to
Speaker 0 00:23:04 Help you sit up right last up with you. Feed helps with the process of setting her up as much as possible. No,
Speaker 1 00:23:14 But really you're going to get pneumonia if we don't get these wet clothes off yet. Is that all right? Can I help you with that?
Speaker 0 00:23:19 Uh, yeah, that's, that's fine. She's very clinical
Speaker 1 00:23:23 In the way that she goes about it. You can tell that she's a very experienced medical
Speaker 0 00:23:27 Professional, but
Speaker 1 00:23:29 As she goes to help with getting the rest of your shirt off, you hear her
Speaker 0 00:23:34 Go, oh, by Tamara's hammer. She's behind
Speaker 1 00:23:39 You looking at something on your back. You can't tell what,
Speaker 0 00:23:43 Uh, what what's going on. It looks like that light and bolded a real number on you.
Speaker 1 00:23:52 She helps you pivot around on the bed so that your back is facing at a certain angle and then goes over to the captain's dresser and picks up a small hand mirror that is sitting on the top and hands it to you. Your back is facing a floor length covered mirror, but doc goes over and briefly pulls the curtain over to the side so that you can kind of angle the hand mirror to get a look at your back.
Speaker 2 00:24:24 Okay? I do that.
Speaker 1 00:24:27 As you look down at yourself, you can see a little bit of what's happening on the front of your torso. It looks like when the lightning hit you, the electricity conducted very prominently through the scale male on the shoulders and neck of the gift of the storm. Bringer. Because as you look down in front of you at both your shoulders and down a little bit beyond your collarbones, there are just these bright white scars in Jagen Lichtenberg figure patterns stretched all the way across the front of your chest and over your shoulders. And then when you look down into the hand mirror and catch the reflection of your back and the other floor length mirror behind you, you see that that scarring has extended down your back on both sides of your spine. In a pattern that almost looks like wings like folded leathery wings with scallops edges against your back outlined in these Lichtenberg figures that are shooting down across your skin and you hurt the area on your skin where the scarring is hurts like a motherfucker, but you just sit here looking at this. And as you look down into the hand mirror again, you can see that one streak of hair coming up from your forehead and down over one of your shoulders has gone stark white, as opposed to its typical black.
Speaker 0 00:26:13 He puts the hand mirror down like face down on the side table. Like it is a grenade, right? That's interesting. Okay. By interest in sure. And doc goes
Speaker 1 00:26:27 Over and covers up the floor length mirror again with the Gazi black fabric that was draped over
Speaker 0 00:26:32 It. She comes back
Speaker 1 00:26:34 And sits down on the edge of the bed with you. She has all kinds of medical instruments with her, a stethoscope, a couple of other things she checks in on your heart rate. And then she leans back over your shoulder and looks at that scarring down both sides of your back again.
Speaker 0 00:26:53 There's going to be some nerve damage. I'm sure you've already felt that though. Yeah, everything's pretty painful. Great now. Right?
Speaker 1 00:27:03 That's all I can hope with. She dips down into her medical kit, rattles around for a second and comes up with a little glass vial that she presses into your hand
Speaker 0 00:27:13 And goes bottoms up. Then I trust doc implicitly in this matter. So bottoms up. Sure. Down the hatch, this potion that
Speaker 1 00:27:22 She has given you takes effect in seconds, the pain is dulled, but also you feel like your cognitive processes are pretty slowed. You feel
Speaker 0 00:27:33 Kinda high, very
Speaker 1 00:27:36 Floaty, but you don't hurt as much anymore.
Speaker 0 00:27:39 For sure. And at this
Speaker 1 00:27:41 Point I'd like you to roll an Arconic check on yourself. So you will have advantage since it's on
Speaker 0 00:27:47 You, but as
Speaker 1 00:27:49 You get a little tipsy off of whatever medicine doc just gave you, you have the feeling that something about your magic inherently is kind of weird 19. Okay? So you're able to figure out everything. So fi number one, your whole ordeal has given you another source or a level. And number two, your subclass has changed. You are no longer a divine soul sorcerer. You are now a storm sorcerer.
Speaker 0 00:28:20 Yeah, baby. So that
Speaker 1 00:28:23 Comes with its whole own set of new things that you can do now. And some things that you can no
Speaker 0 00:28:30 Longer do, but yes,
Speaker 1 00:28:32 Essentially your magic has fundamentally changed.
Speaker 0 00:28:37 Doc
Speaker 1 00:28:38 Helps you out of the rest of your wet clothes and into a dry set, changes the sheets on the bed
Speaker 0 00:28:45 Does her best to make you comfortable. And then she leaves a couple
Speaker 1 00:28:49 More vials of that medicine on the bedside table.
Speaker 0 00:28:52 Next to you, pets your hair back from your head and says,
Speaker 1 00:28:56 He'll be all right last. You've got fight in ya. I say it. And she kind of just pats your cheek a little too hard and turns around and walks out of the captain's quarters. She runs into the captain and Leo, as she's walking out the captain shoulders past her sees that you are awake and lucid and immediately books it over to sit on the side of the bed with you.
Speaker 0 00:29:20 Huh? Look at
Speaker 1 00:29:20 You. Bright-eyed and bushy tailed. What's a storm got on you.
Speaker 0 00:29:30 Well, you don't want me to answer that honestly, or this conversation is going to get very sad. I'm good. Doc got me fixed up. I'm tired, but fine. Leo.
Speaker 1 00:29:41 Who's still hovering in the doorway. Looks at the captain very heavily and goes. You're going to have all the time. You need to rest. We've got it handled.
Speaker 0 00:29:51 Got what handled. What are we doing? I'm I'm fine. I can help. I
Speaker 1 00:29:56 Don't know. Thank you, Ken. Right now we are apparently getting the ship to the closest port. So Ascot can get resources to make repairs. We took a little bit of a beating before I was able to stop everything.
Speaker 0 00:30:12 Sure. Where's the nearest port. Do we need to look at the maps? Figure that out. I, the captain
Speaker 1 00:30:18 Shakes his head and gently nudges you as if to ask you to lay back
Speaker 0 00:30:23 Down. Don't worry yourself. Last.
Speaker 1 00:30:27 Besides the masks took a little too much damage for us to be worried about catching much wind, but were going to be at the nearest island in about eight, nine hours. And apparently your brother can control the ocean now. So
Speaker 0 00:30:44 Well that's new Leo grimaces and shakes his head, not new, just newly available. Well, I'm not complaining, but so much for moral lines of the sand
Speaker 1 00:30:58 Looks like he wants to say something really bitchy for a second, but then visibly reign himself in.
Speaker 0 00:31:05 He leans
Speaker 1 00:31:06 Over the other side of the bed and just reaches out and very carefully squeezes your hand.
Speaker 0 00:31:13 I said that there
Speaker 1 00:31:14 Wasn't anything in this world that I could think of that would make me willing to draw on
Speaker 0 00:31:18 That power. I couldn't think of losing you. That changed things. Well, now I feel like a bitch. He squeezes your arm a little harder and winks at you. Love you too. And then he turns around and leaves. Fig grumbled me at Nestle and then looks at the captain and says really, is there, is there anything I can do? I just, I feel useless and I don't need to be up and walking around to read a map. I can help. I just, I can the captain
Speaker 1 00:31:52 Frowns a little bit and nods to himself.
Speaker 0 00:31:56 We've got plenty of people on the ship that are capable of reading maps, but uh, for what I've got in mind, I think we've only got one person and he leans down and kisses you because there's him back. As he pulls back, she smiles and she says your attempt to distract me as only working because I am very heavily medicated right now. Not trying to distract you from anything loss, just looking for the strength
Speaker 1 00:32:22 To go talk to Ascot about what we have to do. Once
Speaker 0 00:32:24 We get into port, he pets your hair back and kisses you on the forehead. Rest for me, fine. And feed just lays back down. It is an uneventful eight or so hours. It's pretty early evening. By the time the ship pulls up alongside for a second. You're not sure what you're looking at is just this big Spire of rock shooting out of the ocean. As the sun starts to go down, you start to see lights way, way up at the top of the Spire. And you realize there is a town way up on this rock. The captain at the wheel laughs a little bit as he had to sight of it. And he says would be just our luck to run up on east cliff when we need supplied,
Speaker 1 00:33:24 Spin out on deck, just trying to help. However he can. He turns his head back over towards the captain raises an eyebrow
Speaker 0 00:33:32 East cliff. The captain Grimm says he goes, it's a little place they're very out to the way smaller towns like this. They don't really have much of a state service presence. They don't have a set at LS for damn sure. And it's a bit hard to supply eclipse specifically given that. And he nods up and up and up at where the town is that in the last century or so they've had a hurricane over on the other side of the island. They've had a
Speaker 1 00:34:01 Hurricane for the last century.
Speaker 0 00:34:05 He looks at you and to trust not a meteorologist lad.
Speaker 1 00:34:11 Yeah, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.
Speaker 0 00:34:13 Okay. Leo is just going
Speaker 1 00:34:15 To try to facilitate anything he can to help get the ship docked and get this whole situation.
Speaker 0 00:34:24 There is a little dock at the bottom of this huge Spire of rock you managed to get anchored in. There's not a lot of people on these docks. There are two fishing boats more at, at other places around it. You can already tell this is not a super populated island. You see a stone staircase carved into the rock going up and the crew all start to fall off the ship. As your all unloading fee comes out of the captain's quarters, kind of like swaying, she looks still pretty tired. She sees you grabs onto your shoulder and goes so we're here wherever the hell here is. Yeah. Fantastic. She looks over at this big stone staircase and goes, Ooh, this is not going to be a fun night. Don't worry. I've got you. Hey boots. Oh, thank fuck. I thought you were about to offer to carry me. And I couldn't think of a nice way to tell you how much that wasn't going to happen. Booth walks over it. So she just kinda like spreads her arms and says boots, my Ana and in gratitude, take me away. Big man. That's nods and goes all right last and just crouches down a little bit. So she can kind of like clamber up onto his back and he just sets off
Speaker 2 00:35:49 You all head up. This carved stone staircase. You get to the top of this big Spire of rock. The town of east cliff is not large. There are maybe three dozen houses at a stretch. Everything seems very well-maintained but it's clearly been maintained for a while. As you get to the peak, you are at such a vantage point that you can see on the other side of the island, from the docks, a massive swirling cloud formation, you watch rain and lightning coming down from it. You can see some kind of mass under it. You can't really tell what is going on with that though,
Speaker 1 00:36:47 Is the captain anywhere near me?
Speaker 2 00:36:49 He's walking up ahead of the pack so you can catch up to him. I'm going to
Speaker 1 00:36:52 Run up to him and nod off at the storm
Speaker 4 00:36:56 That the hurricane you were talking about.
Speaker 2 00:36:59 I, he is busy like trying to stop somebody on the street. He like grabs a young loan by the elbow and he says, Los, if you wouldn't mind getting the head woman, we've got arrangements to discuss. And this young woman says to bring us anything good, captain, the captain grimaces, not as good as I would've liked, but I'd rather discuss that with Ms. Rose, if you don't mind and this young woman nods runs off the crew stop and kind of the main square of this town, are you doing anything while you're writing?
Speaker 1 00:37:34 Leo has got one eye on fi one eye on the storm. But other than that, isn't really doing anything.
Speaker 2 00:37:40 After a few minutes, the young woman that the captain stopped earlier comes out of one of the houses with this older sworn folk lady, dark curly hair, brown skin that was big sharp Sharky teeth and opaque eyes that all star folk have. She's like dusting your hands off on an apron. And she comes out. She nods at the captain. She says here a bit late. We ran out of perishable three months ago, the captain grimaces and like cringes a little bit bad news about that. Ms. Rose, you should have a ship coming pretty soon, but were under supplied as it is. And we were actually looking to buy some lumber off here. This older lady kind of frowns when might that other ship be here because we're a bit stretched thin you understand roll inside 14. There was a palpable dip in the energy of this town. When the captain said that you guys were under supplied and the head woman in front of you, she looks like she is trying to hide some pretty profound anxiety.
Speaker 1 00:38:55 If I can, I'd like to shoulder my way to the front of the pack and pull the captain aside for a second. Leo turns over to the head woman and nods. I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 00:39:06 A moment. She kind of gives you a weird, confused look with us, right? Go ahead.
Speaker 1 00:39:14 I'm going to pull the captain off far enough that we can't be heard by the people surrounding us. I want to run this idea by him first. So how much did we get in terms of provisions off that Australian ship? I didn't have the chance to really dig through the whole defined yeah,
Speaker 2 00:39:33 The caffeine squints a little bit. And then over her shoulder, he calls Ascot, come over here, Ascot, bustles over and says what's up. And the captain says, can we get a rough estimate on the supplies that we managed to loot from the Australian ship Ascot kind of frowns. And he says, ah, enough to get us and the crew of the Moray through to sleek Gulf. If we rationed carefully, how much would those supplies feed these people? The captain kind of looks around at the village, both at the same I'd expect. So three weeks give or take.
Speaker 1 00:40:13 We should give these people, our supplies
Speaker 2 00:40:18 Ascot raises his hand a little bit. And he says, noble idea. What do I would remind you that our, we need to eat food to live? Not that I don't want to help the good people are you swift, but, uh, we also prefer not being dead.
Speaker 1 00:40:39 No, you're right. We do need to eat, which is why it's fortunate that I can do this. I cast create food 45 pounds of food that is bland, but nourishing, according to my spell book and 30 gallons of water that appears on the ground in front of me.
Speaker 0 00:41:00 So I cast that. And then I look over at Ascot and the captain. So I
Speaker 1 00:41:07 Can do this about seven times a day, assuming that I'm not casting any beefy or magic for combat
Speaker 0 00:41:13 Purposes, which I think should
Speaker 1 00:41:16 Be more than enough to get us to Pearl port, because this is enough to feed 15 people for 24 hours. Caveat. All of this goes bad after 24 hours. Whereas whatever we got from that Australian ship is going to last a lot longer. These people can benefit from provisions better than we can. I can keep it. It's not going to be boots as cooking, but
Speaker 0 00:41:38 I can keep us fed. Ascot says, right? I feel insane. I'm going to go scream at the ocean for a moment. And he just goes and tifo is on the cliff. I'm going to leave
Speaker 1 00:41:51 Captain back over to the head woman and not at her. Hi, I'm Leo. I'm not important, but we're going to be able to give you a couple of weeks worth of rations to keep your people fed until you can get some,
Speaker 0 00:42:06 She kind of blanks and like looks over your shoulder at where you have conjured enough food for 15 people that is just laying on the ground. I've been around too long to ask questions. How much? Oh no, you're
Speaker 1 00:42:18 Not going to be getting that because that's going to go rotten in like less than 24 hours.
Speaker 0 00:42:23 We, uh, captain, do you want to explain and what happened? The captain Green's a little bit. And he says, Ms. Rose here does not ask about my methods. And the head woman raises both of her hands and says, never have, as long as I don't have starving kids in my town, I don't particularly care that captain Nazi says, we'll get the crew to unload the ration for ya. And then he looks back at you and he says, he said, you can do that seven times a day.
Speaker 1 00:42:53 Again, we need me to stop another storm in its tracks,
Speaker 0 00:42:59 Roughly I reckon that could just about feed all of us and about half of this cliff. And he looks at the headline and he says, does that math seem about right for you? The head nod. She says, I with a rough head count, the captain DeRay wins widely and looks at you and says, we'll get to cast let's um,
Speaker 1 00:43:23 Okay. Any vessels barrels? Anything that can hold water? Is there somewhere I can set up shop? Oh God, I don't know how to cook. I'm not a cook boots.
Speaker 0 00:43:36 The sound like gets you set up in the square with, uh, enough barrels to hold. Quite a lot of water. It is
Speaker 1 00:43:44 Water and the water does not go bad. The food goes bad. After 24 hours, the water does not. The water stays
Speaker 0 00:43:50 Fresh. Okay. After
Speaker 1 00:43:53 I'm done conjuring up food to feed people, I'd like to go check on fi wherever she
Speaker 0 00:43:58 Is. The captain kind of negotiates with the head woman. As you're making food for everybody that is injured or ill to stay in town for a bit, they don't really have an in so much as they have empty houses, but fee is set up in one of those. You go and check on her. She is semi-conscious. You can tell she was just about to go under a trance,
Speaker 1 00:44:26 Her some of the bland, but nourishing food that I was able to conjure and kind of sit on the edge of the
Speaker 0 00:44:32 Bed with her. He starts to tuck into the food that you brought her pauses. Squints says, oh, this is gross. Yeah. It's created
Speaker 1 00:44:42 By magic. And I did what I could and all of our fucking paprika is back on the boat. So tuck
Speaker 0 00:44:48 In. All right, bossy. She's on a lot of pain medication still, but she eats her dinner in relative silence. So how are you feeling? Ooh, way better than I will be when my medication wears off. Yeah, that makes sense. I fuck.
Speaker 1 00:45:10 Sorry. I went through most of the power that I've got in me right now to try to just get everybody.
Speaker 0 00:45:18 Do you think that maybe a cure
Speaker 1 00:45:19 Wounds or something would help? Can I,
Speaker 0 00:45:23 She kind of frowns and she says, it's fine. You had other stuff to do. Okay. I'm just, I'm going to take my trans I think yeah. Given
Speaker 1 00:45:36 Previously experiences, I'm a little worried about that storm, but
Speaker 0 00:45:41 He pauses for Cathaway to her mouth and says, what storm you, you didn't see it? I didn't see anything. My face was in boots, the shirt I saw God,
Speaker 1 00:45:52 As soon as we walked into town, there's this massive storm. On the other side, out of the island, the captain said it's been going for decades.
Speaker 0 00:46:02 That's weird and not have storms usually act. Can I roll insight on the whole situation? Go ahead. 23. You've been
Speaker 2 00:46:16 In and around the Zephyr Isles long enough.
Speaker 0 00:46:19 And you've been in the Fri trials during storm season long enough to know that a stationary storm is extremely weird. They move around a lot. They're very inconsistent, which is half the reason for the way that the ship's been bouncing from island to island. Just a massive hurricane, just randomly next to an island for seemingly no reason that to you says magic. All right. Genius
Speaker 1 00:46:50 Says it with a little more fondness than the typical insult that it would be.
Speaker 0 00:46:55 Can you think of any
Speaker 1 00:46:56 Reason for one big storm to stay in one place for over a century that doesn't scream
Speaker 0 00:47:03 Magic? Do you feel kind of tilt her head? Like she's thinking for a second? No. I mean, usually the wind would move it and she makes kind of a vague hand gesture. She goes, uh, clouds are not heavy. I'm not explaining this. Well, I'm very tired, but the, the wind, it can move the clouds. So I don't think unless something was keeping it from doing that. Right. Yeah. But you said anything? That's not magic. So I didn't think that I saw something
Speaker 1 00:47:38 In there. I couldn't tell what it was. It looked like some kind
Speaker 0 00:47:41 Of landmass, maybe another island. Huh? I mean, that would make sense. This place looks like it's a part of a mountain, probably another peak just down
Speaker 1 00:47:53 And rubs his hand along the leather of his.
Speaker 0 00:47:58 No, I've got a weird feeling. There's something going on with that storm, but I'll
Speaker 1 00:48:04 Figure it out later, you finish your dinner. You rest I'll be right
Speaker 0 00:48:07 Here. She kind of like grabs her arm. She says, can you rub my back? I don't feel good. Yeah, sure. He got it. I'm going to just do whatever she needs me to do until she falls into her trans. She does that. Not too terribly long after that. As soon
Speaker 1 00:48:25 As she he's out, I'm just going to go to wherever I can get line of sight on that storm and stare at it for a really long time. Can I Arconic check it? Can I do anything?
Speaker 0 00:48:40 Go ahead and roll our Conna 17 as this hurricane whirls and lights up with lightning, you realize that as you were sitting with her sister, her Cape, like thrown over a chair, the colors in it pulsed in a really similar way to the way they're pulsing in the storm right now, the eye of the storm widens just a little bit. And you can see that there is definitely a landmass down there. Huh? I'm going to go inside and try to find the captain. The captain is not inside. He's in the square, kind of laying on a bench, looking up at the stars as you approach. He does not sit up. He just says, what does you want flat to ask you what you know about that storm? I've I don't, it's going to sound
Speaker 1 00:49:36 Stupid. It makes me feel weird. It makes me feel really
Speaker 0 00:49:39 Weird. Like there's
Speaker 1 00:49:42 Something I should know, but I don't.
Speaker 0 00:49:47 He does sit up at that. I, I don't know much existed for most of my life started hearing reports about it out in power port. When I was about close to 50, a little younger what's inside it. I've seen something in there. Not much a little tiny Spire, a rock. As far as I know, it was used for shelter. When there were attacks on the island, San Diego. Now, if there's no flat surface, why would they use it for shelter? The snorts inside of the whole things, practically. Hold on. There's a big fuck off cave that you can only get to through the water century.
Speaker 1 00:50:35 Long storm cropping up around a big fuck off cave. Unsettling, magical vibes.
Speaker 0 00:50:42 Wait here for a second. He calls after you. All right. Thank you for a perfectly normal conversation. I'll be back Jack ass. Fuck you eat shit is fee trancing when I get back upstairs.
Speaker 5 00:51:00 Yep. I am going
Speaker 1 00:51:02 To as quietly as I can try to grab the Cape
Speaker 5 00:51:06 Rolls stealth with disadvantage 21, that rogue levels hurting in and bud. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:51:17 We all know face past the perception is not that high.
Speaker 5 00:51:21 Okay. You grabbed the Cape and you don't make her up.
Speaker 1 00:51:24 I run back downstairs with it and grab the captain and pull him around to the backside of the end, where I was watching the storm
Speaker 5 00:51:32 Watch. And I hold the Cape up.
Speaker 0 00:51:38 I'm going to roll a religion. Check for the captain with advantage, which he needs
Speaker 4 00:51:47 Every time with this man. I would say I'm sick to baster death of him. But this one time, this one time he came through
Speaker 6 00:51:54 For us, it's all the same fucking done. So the captain rolled in that 20
Speaker 0 00:52:05 Key looks at the Cape and then he looks at the storm and then he starts the GERD in very slowly.
Speaker 5 00:52:13 Well, we'll be down. He nods at the storm and he says, I'd bet you 50 gold paces. This is cave is work. Yeah, help me here. Back it up. Who's Kiva
Speaker 2 00:52:25 The captain groans so loud, so loud. He puts his head in his hands and he says, swear to fuck.
Speaker 5 00:52:34 And then he just
Speaker 2 00:52:36 Drags both hands down his face. I dearly wish you and your sister would communicate to share information. So I wouldn't have to explain the same thing twice. Uh, you know what, actually,
Speaker 1 00:52:48 Captain, I will beg you to leave me in the
Speaker 5 00:52:50 Blissful blissful, darker ignorance just a little bit longer,
Speaker 1 00:52:56 Because if I find out information from you that my sister can and perhaps should have told me, and she finds out about that on top of the fact that I took one of her personal effects, she will kill me. So why don't you just let me talk to fie about this? And then we'll all put our heads together and tackle it later. And then we'll both conveniently forget that you and I had this conversation
Speaker 2 00:53:27 Kept in size and he says, Lord, I don't feel right. Keeping secrets from a woman I'm in a relationship with.
Speaker 5 00:53:34 And besides that, I'm stupid a woman that you're okay. I knew the fake
Speaker 1 00:53:42 Details. I don't want any more than the vague details for the record.
Speaker 5 00:53:47 My sister is transferring, but boy, howdy. When she
Speaker 1 00:53:52 Wakes up, I will catch up with you in about four hours. Okay? Can you just your mouth shut until then
Speaker 5 00:54:00 He pauses for a second? Like he's thinking, oh yeah. I'd give you an 85% odds on that.
Speaker 1 00:54:07 It's fine. Gonna be in the room with her. I won't let you do anything stupid. I'm going to fuck me. I'm going to go. I walk back, get to the end and I just sit and wait for feedback. Wake up fee. I wake up to a palpably tense atmosphere in this little room that you're sleeping in. You open your eyes, turn over to the side. There's a small table with a couple chairs in one corner of your room. And your brother is sitting at that table with a bag of what appears to be some kind of divinity. Cory bones just stacking them up. Like they're a Jenga tower and then knocking them down and then starting to stack them back up again.
Speaker 0 00:54:59 He looks over at,
Speaker 1 00:55:00 You sees that you are now conscious and then stands up plants, both hands on his hips and goes good morning. Sunshine. We have some things to talk about.
Speaker 0 00:55:14 Aw, no. Yes. I don't feel good. I was exaggerating yesterday. I'm going back to chance. No, you're not. Who's Kiva. Oh, it's that conversation. Okay. I'm going to set up, hopefully take some pain medication. Yeah. You have your medicine with you. You have the glass vials. The doc gave you back on the ship. Okay. I'm going to take one of those. So Kiva, um, where do I start? Uh, as far as I know, she was revered in the Sheria for a while and then not anymore. There was some kind of, uh, religious mass killing and then fled to the Zephyr. Isles became kind of a minor spirit here. Uh, somewhat of a spirit of death and storms, uh, did send that lightening bullet at me the other day. Um, also my patron spirit, DD, whatever. Now we're a bit on the rocks.
Speaker 1 00:56:25 I remember when I got really super Frank with you about
Speaker 0 00:56:27 My religious trauma. Yeah. Leo smile.
Speaker 1 00:56:32 Kyle's at you, but it is in a way that he is also quite noticeably baring his teeth and just shakes his head
Speaker 0 00:56:39 A little bit. Anyway, whatever
Speaker 1 00:56:42 Your key he was involved in, it's got something to do with that storm. That's off the other side of the island and there is anti quote, a big fuck off cave in the middle of it. I just figured it would be worth mentioning since you know, you didn't decide to talk to me about this.
Speaker 0 00:57:00 Hold on, hold on. There's a cave. Yes.
Speaker 1 00:57:04 A big fuck off cave. From what I've heard.
Speaker 0 00:57:09 Dammit, fi flings her blankets off and starts to get out of bed. Hey, Hey. Hey, easy. Can you stand? Well, I'm going to have to add a dream at a cave yesterday. So I guess this is what we're doing now. All right, come on. Let's go find the captain
Speaker 1 00:57:28 Fee. Now that you are up and on your feet, you are operating under two levels of exhaustion. So that means that you have disadvantage on all ability checks and your speed is halved. So the steps down to the docks from east cliff are a lot Leo attempts to help you down one flight before he decides that it is a better idea to go back up into the square and get booths to schlep you the rest of the way down. But once you get down there, you see the captain and a couple other members of the crew that are supervising several villagers hauling in timber to help repair the ship. Ascot is facilitating the movement of all this wood up onto the deck and the head woman of the village is also down there. You vaguely remember being around her last
Speaker 0 00:58:18 Night. Leo takes
Speaker 1 00:58:20 A few purposeful steps over to the captain and says, all right, well, she's caught up. So what are we going to do about that? And then he jerks a thumb over his shoulder towards the other side of
Speaker 0 00:58:31 The island. The captain
Speaker 1 00:58:34 Looks back and forth between you fie and your brother with a look that can only be described as sheer
Speaker 0 00:58:41 Panic. I don't actually feel that caught up. You said there was a storm and a cave. We do need to go to the cave. I get the sense that ignoring prophetic dreams is not really wise. The captain
Speaker 1 00:58:57 Eyes are very wide and he nods at you very slowly. I there's the storm
Speaker 2 00:59:05 And there's the cave. And
Speaker 4 00:59:09 It's apparently very important and I'm going to help anyway. I can
Speaker 2 00:59:14 Feed not that I'm. She goes, you're being extremely weird, but I'm too tired to interrogate her right now. Um, thank heavens for that. No, no, I'll just remember that you said that and hold onto it. And she kind of like puts her hand to her chest right here. Ouch. That hurt. He likes
Speaker 1 00:59:34 To know, not answer you and turns instead over to the head woman of the village of east cliff nods very politely and says, Ms.
Speaker 4 00:59:42 Rose, you wouldn't happen to have any kind of vessel that we could borrow to, uh, take a bit of a trip around to the other side. So the island, this
Speaker 1 00:59:51 Woman fully throws her head back and laughs
Speaker 2 00:59:55 Promising. Oh
Speaker 4 00:59:56 Wow. Hi, you want to sail a dinghy into that thing and expect to come back alive. The captain's smile
Speaker 1 01:00:03 Gets a little more manic and he just shakes his head.
Speaker 4 01:00:06 I'll tell her to expect to come out of anything alive anymore. Ma'am I think that's part of the reason I still alive
Speaker 2 01:00:13 To be fair. I have three kind of like waves her hand and I think she expects it to make a gust can trip. And instead her fingers just crackle with lightning and she kind of flinches and blanks and goes, sorry. I, um, I have a bit of magic that could help us through here.
Speaker 1 01:00:35 The huddle looks at you and then takes a very long glance at your Cape nods,
Speaker 4 01:00:42 Right? Then there's we fish and boat you three could use, if you really feel that you're up to it. Leo goes, oh, we are,
Speaker 5 01:00:55 The captain goes, we are, we are, let's go.
Speaker 1 01:01:09 And that is where we're going to end for this week. It's going to be an interesting time. Next time we all get together. Oh, you could have waited to take this.
Speaker 2 01:01:22 No I could not have,
Speaker 1 01:01:24 But I guess we'll see how that plays out next time
Speaker 2 01:01:27 On some pill duel
Speaker 3 01:01:29 <inaudible> Hey, everybody
Speaker 1 01:01:43 Barry here with the postscript, just clearing up a couple of housekeeping things here. At the end of the episode, you can find us on social media on Twitter, Tumblr and talk at compel duel. You can also find us on Tik TOK at compelled duel audios, where we post audio snippets from the show, we have lots of other cool stuff available, like our official Spotify account, our official website. You can find all of that linked on our various social media profiles.
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Speaker 0 01:03:08 Episode 13
Speaker 1 01:03:09 Is going to be going live on Friday, September 3rd, 2021. Or if you are a member of our Patrion, you'll be getting your early access on Thursday, September 2nd. Thanks so much. And we'll see you next week.
