Episode 153 - That Back Door

## Intro

**Episode description:**
How much can we pack into one long rest?

**Opening Quote:**
Distorted voice: Let's play some D&D guys

**Player introduction:**
**Sean**: Hello and welcome to another episode of the tabletop champions podcast, I'm Sean your dungeon master and with me tonight we have Stephanie who plays Boone...
**Stephanie** **(distorted)**: Ahoy-hoy
**Sean**: Lauren who plays Brenna...
**Lauren**: How do you hit a beholder with a bow? You eyeball it!
**Matt**: Awh...
**Sean**: Matt who plays Cyrus...
**Matt**: Look into my eye.
**Sean**: Ben who plays Kallas...
**Ben**: Eh, greetings.
**Sean**: And Kyle who plays Cam.
**Kyle (distorted)**: Howdy
**Sean**: Hey guys!
**Various**: Hi!
**Sean**: Uh, what's going on tonight?
**Lauren**: Chaos, the usual.
**Kyle**: Audio - it's fun, and consistent, and easy! I think the best thing about recording a podcast is that it's always easy and nothing ever goes wrong.
**Matt**: Said no one ever.
**Stephanie**: Fuck audio issues.

## Episode Summary

The party settles into the magical cabin, meeting the Ghost Butler. Cyrus paints, Boone makes tea, and Brenna asks Cam for a story. Cam says he'd rather be outside because the cabin has only one exit. Seeing Ghost Butler taking notes, Cam and Boone decide everyone should stop talking and the party goes to bed. Ghost Butler offers Cam normal bedding, then grass, then a corner to sleep in and is rejected. Boone goes to a chair, and waits to go to sleep last. Brenna asks Cyrus why he joined the party, and he lies very badly.

After everyone goes to sleep, Boone wakes up Cam, calling him Leopold. Cam calls Boone Devonshire, and they go outside to talk. Boone apparently didn't recognize Cam for a long time, while Cam had been pretending not to know her. Cam says everything is bad for both of them, and he would rather die than see his father again. Boone also doesn't want to go home. Cam says their family will hopefully kill themselves in war. Cam asks about the trustworthiness rest of the party, and Boone gives an ambivalent response. They agree on the code word "Periwinkle" if they see someone who's a problem. Cam says it's safer for other people if they're not close to him, or if they don't know anything. There appears to be a distinction between Cam's home and family and Boone's, but not a significant one.

When they go back to the cabin, the "outside weather" now seems temperate, with the sound of crickets instead of snow. Inside is slightly bigger, and there's now a back door and a dedicated painting area. Cyrus is sleep-painting. Brenna is sleeping on animal pelts. Cyrus's painting is of him covered in blood, proudly standing on a hill above a pile of corpses (not faceless)150, with a gigantic black demon holding puppet strings above and behind him. Boone casts Divine Sense on the painting and senses nothing.

Kallas is sweating profusely. In his dream, he's in a desert, sprinting terrified through a sandstorm. He hears footsteps behind him, but all he can see behind him is sand, or maybe incorporeal figures made of sand. They're gaining on him, and the only thing besides open desert is a small mountain with torches at its base, far off in the distance. Kallas runs towards it, but the sand is getting thicker, and he begins to breathe it in and sink into the sand, the figures pushing him down. Just before his mouth is submerged, he hears his friend say, "Save me Kallas." Then he chokes, and wakes up to Boone and Cam. Boone pretends Kallas woke them up, though Cam contradicts this story somewhat. Ghost Butler appears with a wet rag and a glass of water. They discuss the changed cabin and creepy painting, which Boone turns around as if that solves the problem.

Kallas and Cam go to bed, and Boone paces and murmurs to herself, then goes to her chair. It now has a rune that activates a magical bubble when touched, and there is also an armor rack next to it. Cam's stuff had been packed up next to the back door, but he moves his stuff to the front door and sleeps there. In the morning, there is bacon, and the back door is open, showing a pleasant forest spring evening, while the windows still show snow. Cam is creeped out and Ghost Butler is sad. He leaves through the wall and a timer appears. The party discusses Cyrus's creepy painting. Cyrus first denies he painted it, then attempts to paint over it (the paint runs off), then attempts to slash it with a dagger (it turns into sand). Cyrus pretends to be in denial, but Kallas can tell he's scared. Ghost Butler attempts to take it through the wall, fails, and hangs it backward above the fireplace. The timer runs out, and everyone is shot out of the cabin with the painting, and the door transforms back into a tiny cabin. Cyrus tries to destroy the painting with Eldritch Blast (no effect), then bury it (it appears in his pack). Kallas proposes they start a fire, put the painting in Cyrus's hand, and burn it, but Cyrus rejects the suggestion. A muscular Aasimar with his head shaved on the sides, a ponytail, and burns on his shoulders approaches on horseback. He introduces himself as Cadran Morgrir and says he can help Cyrus with what ails him, in Silver Strings. Cam emerges from behind a rock and tells Brenna to stop telling people their destination. The party spots a red dragon in the distance, but it's not on their way.

The party continues on their way to Thistlepot Junction, and comes across the corpse of the elf they were looking for, Zenith Othos. He is hung from a tree with the words "Oathbreaker", "Blood traiter", and "Usurper" carved into his chest in Undercommon. As Kallas is looking for Zenith's guards, he is shot with a crossbow bolt by a drow, which flees into the forest.

## Memorable Quotes

**Cyrus**: I thirst for adventure?
**Brenna**: That sounds fake, but okay.

**Stephanie**: Kyle fucked up and said a big thing about me.
**Kyle**: That part I am editing out of the show, though. I'm leaving in this part where I'm admitting to fucking up something and editing it out of the show later, but I'm editing me actually fucking it up out.

**Stephanie**: Actually Kyle, counterpoint, he did ask, and then we were dicks.