Dice, Camera, Action Episode 60 - Storm King's Thunder

 

 Episode 60 - The Red, the White, and the Crew

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There were a few interesting tweets from Chris Perkins leading up to this episode:

"Remember that D&D live game after the battle vs. Isohedrus when Viari threw a pile of ?? at a big red dragon to appease it? I do."
 
"Well, in next week's season finale of #DiceCameraAction, I finally get to pay off that "payoff.""

Then there was a question and answer:
"So the blood sacrifice Strahd made to the Dark Powers was....The Waffle Crew???"

"Well, they *do* represent all that is good in the multiverse, so yeah."

The Waffle Crew

(Anna) Evelyn - Human Paladin of Lathander
(ProJared) Diath - Human Rogue
(Nathan) Paultin - Human Bard
(Holly) Strix - Tiefling Sorcerer
(Dani Hartel) Captain Xandalla - Elf Sorcerer, I think

Last time, the group made friends with Captain Xandalla and they went to find the legendary ring of winter. They ended up in a frost giant village called Kronenheim in a glacial rift, where the frost giants had been killed by one or more dragons. Evelyn blew a giant alpine horn, and alerted a massive three-headed giant - an everlasting one from Volo's Guide to Monsters.

The giant charges across the room and Xandalla takes flight. Paultin summons the hut and takes refuge inside. Paultin and the dragon cultist crew are in it together, safe.

Diath runs up, draws Gutter and hacks into the giant's ankle. Chris reminds him he gets his sneak attack damage and Jared makes a funny/sleazy cackle.

Xandalla casts fireball and does 42 points to the everlasting one. The group is very pleased with this. Strix is dismayed.. she never gets applause for her spells.

Paultin is dismayed when he notices that the cultists are quietly discussing slitting his throat.

Xandalla sees that the giant is regenerating. The giant rages and does 56 points to Xandalla, who is very bloody but still standing. Some of her blood pours onto the dome of the magical hut. Paultin is even more alarmed.

Evelyn blinds one of the three heads with blinding smite. Strix polymorphs the giant into a three-headed bantam chicken. What the hell is a bantam chicken? I googled it. They are small chickens.

Everybody, including Chris, is really excited today, sort of giddy.

Diath grabs the chicken.

From the back of the hall comes a giant vulture made of ice ridden by a human in a winter parka. Artus Cimber? Yup! Xandalla recognizes him. That's the guy with the ring of winter from this novel.

Xandalla tells the group that he has the ring. Paultin really wants the ring so that he can create his own ice vulture.

The cultists leave the hut, run up and destroy the vulture. Artus plop to the ground.

Description of Artus Cimber: He is middle-aged, athletic, handsome man with a mustache and beard. He has hair down to his shoulders and wears leather armor. He's got gloves on, probably covering the ring on his finger. The chat declares that Artus Cimber is Nicholas Cage.

Evelyn runs over to him and tells him to stay down "in the name of Lathander."

Paultin chugs on over. He tries to convince Artus to give him the ring, saying "Ice bird please." Artus warns him that the ring will control one who is weak of mind. It is evil.

Paultin casts levitate on him. It works! Artus is hovering.

Strix is on her broom and now she has the chicken. She sticks it in one of the cages up near the ceiling.

Diath watches the cultists for a moment. He doesn't trust them. He spots a white dragon in the sky! Eep.. it's an old dragon. It might be the same dragon at the ranger's lodge. It is. It's Isohedrus, the dragon that Acquisitions Inc fought on one of the last live shows.

Xandalla tells Paultin to get the sending stone from the cultists - the cultists have been using it to talk to the red dragon, Klauth, who was also on the Acquisitions Inc. show.

The cultists turn against their captain. Nyzroth chucks daggers at Xandalla, but she uses a shield spell to block them. Dani is very sharp and she has a real good grasp on her character.

The dragon approaches! Frightful presence kicks in. Evelyn and Paultin fail their saves. Wait... Evelyn uses inspiration. She's been rolling bad today. Re-roll... she rolls an 18. She makes her save! Chris decides to give Paultin advantage because he's drunk. Nate rolls a natural 20.

Strix kills all but two of the cultists in a fiery explosion.

Nyzroth is still up and so is the woman with the stone. She's grappling Evelyn. Diath runs up and yoinks the stone with an earth-shattering 31 on a sleight of hand check. Wow.

The dragon claws and bites Artus, who is bloodied. I assume his mullet is still intact. Didn't Nicholas Cage go to jail in The Rock just because he didn't walk away from some dudes who were saying mean things about his wife? That was dumb, Artus. Although, to be fair, he saved the world from a plane full of serial killers.

The dragon hisses to the heroes, "This is between him and me." The group is accepting of this.

Xandalla knows this might be Isohedrus, a dragon that lives in a crashed icy citadel.

Xandalla tries to polymorph Isohedrus into a sea cucumber. It makes its save.

Artus uses a power called flesh to ice. If the dragon fails three saves, it will be an ice statue. Does it have legendary resistance? Chris explains after the show that the dragon used up its 3 legendary resistances fighting the giants.

Artus starts running for the airship. The female cultist runs over to Xandalla and hits her twice, once with a critical hit, dropping her to exactly 0 hit points.

Evelyn drops the cultist with Treebane. Nyzroth is the only cultist left. Strix fireballs Nyzroth, shaping it around Diath, and Nyzroth is very dead.

The dragon breathes ice and hits Diath. He takes 54 damage and he's down. Evelyn uses lay on hands and Diath springs back to life. Evelyn takes back the Heart of Spinelli, her flaming sword that he had been holding for her.

The flesh to ice spell is successful. The dragon turns into an ice sculpture. Evelyn heals Xandalla and gives her the stone. Evelyn wants to use her fire sword to try to melt the statue. She writes an "E" for "Evelyn" in it.

Xandalla hears a voice through the sending stone. It says, "Report." Xandalla says that the cultists are dead. Klauth says, "I'll come to you in three days."

Diath notices that Strix is gone and he is extremely concerned.

We learn that while the group was mopping up the bad guys, Strix had heard somebody talking over her shoulder. Someone was peaking arcane words - an infernal incantation. She's gone. Sound likes she just went to hell?!

Diath grabs Xandalla and demands to know what she did.

Heyyy... he's going to have to use Gutter to find out what happened! Right?

The group gets on the ship, ready to search the area for Strix. Jared doesn't waste time putting a key in Gutter. I blow an air horn in celebration.

Paultin feels an itch. He scratches himself and a piece of his neck comes off. That's where we stop!

Sounds like Paultin got himself a death curse, bah gawd.

Chris says that this is the last show of season 2. Season 3 begins on September 19th. Apparently there are a bunch of announcements that can't be made yet. I know there were hints on twitter of some kind of crossover with Acquisitions Inc., which would be awesome.

Overall

Apparently something was announced an hour after the show ended. I'm writing this a few hours after, so let's go see. Here it is!

Holly is going to be on the next Acquisitions, Inc live show! Wow. They've got art and everything. Jim Darkmagic, Omin Dran, Viari, and Strix.

If you want to see where they left off in the Acq Inc game, I have a summary of their last live show here.

On that show, the heroes learned that the soul of Omin's sister is in the soulmonger. The group will need to defeat the.. "Sewn sisters"? And their child?

Strix was pulled away by an infernal entity? Infernal usually means hell, aka devils. Strix is half devil. Maybe her devil parent took her?

Thinking about it - devils would be angry about the soulmonger. Devils traffic in souls, and Acererak is likely stealing souls that should be going to hell.

Who could Strix's father be? If it's an archdevil, the choices are:

• Dispater: The paranoid guy who rules the city of Dis
• Mammon: The greedy guy
• Belial: The sleazy guy
• Levistus: The dude frozen in a glacier
• Baalzebul: The slug guy
• Mephistopheles: The cunning schemer
• Asmodeus: Lord of Hell

Asmodeus is the most dramatic choice. That would make Strix related to Glasya, who is extremely dangerous and would want Strix dead. If they're not related, maybe he wants Strix to be his bride. His wife was killed by his daughter, so there's a ruby-studded diadem worth 50,000 gp up for the lucky gal who is ready to relocate to the bottom of the lowest crack in Nessus.

Mephistopheles would be a cool option, too. There is plenty of room for Chris to flesh him out. I'd love to see more info on his wife, Balphegor.

I wrote a really long guide to the archdevils on my blog here.

Aha.. a podcast went up! There's a whole podcast session of Acquisitions Inc with Holly up right now. I'll write that up, hopefully, tomorrow. Sounds like it explains some of Strix's origin!

Dani: I think Dani is one of my favorite guests so far. She's very comfortable and "real". She feels like your friend, or someone you'd want to be friends with.

Season 2 Thoughts: Thinking about this season as a whole, I'm not sure how to sum it up. I love that they kept to a regular schedule, and I personally like the lessened emphasis on guest stars.

The popularity of the show grew greatly, especially in the past few weeks. It very much feels like something that will be around for the long haul.

There were two very significant episodes this season that were probably the highlights of the series so far. The whole campaign definitely has an emotional heft to it that a lot of D&D campaigns don't have. I think a lot of that is due to the enthusiasm of the players. They love playing the game, and that makes it very fun to watch.

It was interesting to watch Chris kind of dance around, mixing concepts from the published adventures. There is something so relieving about watching him run games and doing things that you've done or would like to do. He's a DM just like us! He leans toward whatever takes hold with the players and works in stuff that he thinks will be cool.

The show is very good and I think season 3 is going to be a very big deal!