Episode 146 - Math Is Hard

**Episode description:** Did you expect us to be good at this by Season 4???

**Catchphrase:** *" 'If I could staay aawake, just to hear you breaaathing!' "* - Sean

**Greetings:**

Sean, *"Hello and welcome to another episode of the Tabletop Champions podcast, I'm Sean you dungeon master and with me tonight we have Kyle, who plays Cam."*

Kyle, *"Greetings!"*

Sean, *"Matt, who plays Cyrus."*

Matt, *"Look into my eye."*

Sean, *"Ben, who plays Kallas."*

Ben, *"How are you tonight?"*

Sean, *"Stephanie, who plays Boone."*

Stephanie, *"Ahoy-Hoy!"*

Sean, *"And Lauren, who plays Brenna."*

Lauren, *"What's the best spell against a strange monk-rogue-multiclass who runs around dressed as a nocturnal animal? Bane!"*

Kyle, *"Jesus."*

Sean, *"That one took a while to get to, but--"*

Kyle, *"My goodness."*

Lauren, *"Ha, ha, ha. It did. It was a mouthful!"*

Kyle, *"That was, like, four minutes of setup there."*

Matt, *"Yikes!"*

## Episode Summary

The adventurers spend the night at the **Golden Grain Inn** in the small village of **Orlane**, in a region known as the **Deep Black**. In their room, **Boone** and **Brenna** are attacked by five unknown cultists, trying to overwhelm them. The attackers are wearing black robes and ceramic masks, appearing like serpent faces, and wield a sword and a hand crossbow each.

In the next room, **Cyrus** finally notices the commotion, wakes up **Kallas**, and they storm the girl’s room. Inside, Brenna has ripped through the bed sheets and her white, intricately patterned tattoos are glowing in the dark. Her rage summons her *Ancestral Protectors*, who swarm a cultist. When she batters down on him, his mask shatters and reveals the town carpenter **Pea Ballacki**, whom she spoke to earlier that night.

Once in the room, Cyrus takes off his eye patch to reveal the orange glowing eye of a dragon. First giving a cultist the chilling stare of a curse, he then swings his halberd, missing, but swirls around and floors the invader with the butt end of his weapon, doing wicked damage because of his curse. It breaks the cultist’s neck, and as the life leaves his body, the curse strengthens Cyrus for killing him.

Kallas, who has also faced off with an attacker, now lunges forth and stabs his rapier through their throat, killing them. Seeing this, another intruder attacks Kallas, bloodying him badly, but Kallas fixes his glare on them, and engulfs the cultist in flames with a *Hellish Rebuke*. Kallas uses this distraction to his advantage, launching a sneak attack, and stabs him through the eye.

Brenna has now managed to snatch her great axe, and cleaves into Pea Ballacki, killing him dead. The one remaining person now glares at Boone, having examined the paladin, and threatens that she wears the symbol of the false prophet, and that *"Ahriman will rise again."* Boone does not recognize the serpent masks, but even looking at them gives her the feeling of a swollen throat and a great sense of unease. Up to this point, she has been dueling cultists with a dagger she kept tied to her wrist, but when she raises it now to finish off the last intruder, the point of her weapon shines with an opalescent light, and as it slays the cultist, it sucks the life from him, healing Boone, before the body collapses to ashes.

Somewhere outside, **Cam's** rest is momentarily disturbed by a ruckus coming from the inn, but he manages to go back to sleep. In the following morning, he wakes up early and checks if the inn serves a continental breakfast, which they do, so he digs in while the other adventurers sleep in to finish a long rest. Then Cam joins them in the girl’s room.

Examination of the five corpses yields 42 gold pieces and a kris knife, and five mysterious holy symbols. It is an obsidian bangle in the shape of a black serpent, eating its own tail, with broken wings and a bloody maw. The group only learns that their meaning is very obscure.

The group notices further that the cult has entered their room through a trapdoor under the floor boards. Examining this, they find that it leads to a well used corridor that goes to the ground level, and then deeper underground through a tunnel. They follow this passage northwest, seemingly crossing the whole village, and finally find a locked stone door.

Kallas manages to pick the lock, and they enter a robing room for religious purposes, where they hear soft singing outside the only other door. Some armoires contain mostly ceremonial robes, bearing a distinctive crescent. Brenna reasons that they must belong to worshippers of **Sehanine**. Kallas points out that her good-aligned portfolio does not match the evil deeds of the cultist intruders. Brenna then suggests they might be posing as servants of Sehanine to hide their malice, while Cyrus speculates they could be heretics.

When they break open the only chest which is locked, they find black robes, masks and serpent bangles, matching those of the attackers from the inn.

The group is interrupted when the singing in the other room stops, and someone starts speaking. When listening at the door does not help them understand the words, Brenna very carefully, and perfectly stealthy, opens the door slightly.

Unfortunately, the door touches a bell in the other room. Its ringing interrupts a religious service, and the priest, the temple members and the entire congregation who have all gathered for the morning service now look over at the adventurers behind the door, peering in.

## Memorable Quotes

**Sean,** *"How? How?! What does it look like when this thing turns into a puddle??"*

**Kyle,** *" 'Hey mister Ahriman, Ahriman banana!' That's how I'll remember it."*
**Stephanie & Matt,** *" 'Daylight come, and me wanna go home!' "*

**Kyle,** *"Just cover up your murder hole and take a nap."*
**Sean,** *"Brenna makes a nice, cozy bed on top of the corpses."*