Season 2, Episode 1: Dungeon and D.A.D.D.I.E.S.

*The following article contains spoilers for Season 2. Please listen to the season in its entirety or be warned!*

## Dungeon and D.A.D.D.I.E.S.

### Air date

25 January 2022

**Dungeon and D.A.D.D.I.E.S.** is the very 1st episode of season 2 of *Dungeons and Daddies*. This episode is a fan-favorite.

## Episode Description

> *Four teens get a pretty gnarly detention. They also find out things they didn't expect about their own family histories!*
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## Introduction

Freddie Wong introduces the podcast, saying it's not a BDSM podcast. Matt Arnold adds that it's also not a daddies podcast, but Beth May corrects him by saying that he has to open his mind about what "daddies" means.

Freddie lays out the premise: The podcast tells the story of the four grandchildren of Darryl, Henry, Glenn, and Ron on a quest in a world forever changed by the events of Season One.

## Rad Facts

The four teens are introduced, along with their respective Rad Facts:

* Taylor Swift (Freddie Wong) loves anime and survival. He considers his backpack to be his go-bag, which contains survival gear in case of emergency. Taylor is a Ranger.
* Lincoln Li-Wilson (Matt Arnold) is a home-schooled soccer kid whose voice will drop soon. He is one year older than the other teens because of the class he matriculated into at the local high school in order to join their soccer team. Lincoln is a Paladin.
* Normal Oak (Will Campos) is a perky, peppy, chipper, cheery school spirit mascot kid. He plays Teeny the Teen, the mascot of San Dimas High School. Normal is a Cleric.
* Theresa "Terry/Scary" Marlowe (Beth May) is a former soft-spoken daydreamer now turned rebellious goth after meeting her new stepfather, Terry Stampler. Scary is a Warlock.
* Anthony Burch reprises his role as Daddy Master and explains that some mechanics have been adjusted to change the dynamics of the game.

## Plot Summary

This episode begins with the final scene from the season one finale. The Dads and their families are gathered in the Oak-Garcia household for a movie night. While Henry is in the kitchen preparing popcorn, Lark and Sparrow Oak join him. Sparrow announces that they know things haven't been normal since they returned from the Forgotten Realms, and the two twins agree that Lark needs to apologize to Henry. While embracing Henry, Lark stabs him in the back between his shoulder blades. Henry suddenly remembers the prophecy about The Doodler that the group heard in Episode 3 - The Doodler will be summoned when the Lord of Chaos spills the blood of the Unsung Hero. He also remembers that, in the final battle, Willy Stampler's last act had been to cast the Message spell. Henry discovers not only that Lark is the person who received that Message, but also the message itself: "Henry Oak is the Unsung Hero." And Lark - one half of the Lord of Chaos - just spilled the Unsung Hero's blood.

The three Oaks begin to convulse and vomit streams of static black and gray bile, which aggregates into a cloud and flies out of the window. Everyone runs outside and watches the static cloud continue to grow until it envelops the earth. As the world dissolves into chaos, the party realizes that The Doodler has returned.

### 25 Years Later...

Action resumes 25 years later. The sun is black, the sky is crimson, and jagged scars appear to rip through the sky toward the sun. At San Dimas High School, Grant Wilson and his husband, Marco Li, drop off Link for detention. They try to instill some fatherly advice, warning him about bullies, but Link insists that there aren't any bullies at school. The varsity soccer team immediately confronts Link and teases him, both about having detention and not making the varsity team. Using the cover of his dads as they watch him from the minivan window, Link retreats into the school.

Veronica Marlowe-Stampler and her husband, Terry Stampler Sr., arrive at the school with Theresa "Terry Jr." Marlowe in tow. Terry Jr. refuses to respond to her mother until she calls her "Scary", frustrated that she's become a "junior" after her mother married Terry Sr. He offers her a lunch, which she rebuffs, and leaves the car in a huff. Terry tries to give it to her again and drops it out of the car window onto the sidewalk. As the car drives away, Scary attempts to surreptitiously take the lunch; to her dismay, she sees that Terry saw her. The soccer team approaches her and begs her to return to the team. She brushes them off and leaves for detention.

Cassandra Swift and her son, Taylor, pull up to the school in a self-driving car. He grabs his overladen go-bag, but she confiscates his Leatherman multitool and most of his paracord (but does not not find his ninja rocks). He asks her about his father, as his 23andMe results say that he has non-human DNA. She tells him that she's pretty sure his father was entirely human, and he exits the car. The members of the soccer team call him a weeb, and he retorts by calling them "cucks". It's then revealed that *cuck* has become a term of endearment and that Taylor is the most popular kid in the school. After a bit of banter with the soccer team, Taylor goes inside the school.

Lark, Sparrow, Rebecca, and Normal Oak (wearing the school mascot costume) arrive in a four-seat hybrid. It's revealed that Sparrow is Normal's dad, Rebecca is his mom, and Lark is his uncle. Lark offers Normal a gun to fight off dangerous kids, but Sparrow protests. Rebecca offers pepper spray as a compromise. Sparrow insists that Normal remove the costume so it can be cleaned, but Normal refuses; he believes that wearing it constantly is the only way to protect it from being defaced by the opposing team. He takes the pepper spray and exits the car before being accosted by the soccer team. His enthusiasm quickly deflates their bullying efforts and he heads into the school.

### Detention

In the history classroom, Mrs. Kay greets the four teens. Normal greets Link enthusiastically, but Mrs. Kay quickly curbs the chatter. Link surreptitiously passes a note to Scary about whether or not she'll join the soccer team. She responds with a note back saying that she'll consider it, but she catches the teacher's attention when she tries to pass it to Link. She calls the teens to attention and prompts them to discuss what brought each of them to detention.

Normal volunteers to go first, dramatically asking if it's a crime to love one's school and refusing to apologize. Taylor follows in kind, asking if it's a crime to draw manga in the middle of math class. Scary confesses that she turned in an inappropriately self-centered book report on The Diary of Anne Frank. Link concludes by admitting that he accidentally peed on the urology teacher's foot while urinating outside the school.

Three hours pass, and the teens (with the exception of Taylor) begin to feel panicked and can sense their dads being hunted down. Somehow, the three of them instinctively know that their fathers will die if the teens can't find them soon. Normal feels Lark and Sparrow tell him to stay safe. Link feels his father telling him to take care of and love Marco. Scary feels Terry Sr.'s sadness that he didn't get to know her better. All three of them feel their relatives' love, and the screams in their mind cut out.

After Normal vomits in the mascot costume, he and Link sprint to the door to call their fathers. Before they reach it, the door opens and a man in a suit tries to stop them, saying he has information about their dads. Link ducks past him and continues to run, so the Man in the Suit shoots him with a taser. The Man in the Suit, who claims to be from the superintendent's office, shows his credentials to Mrs. Kay and retrieves Link. She announces that the group will be spending the end of their detention doing community service.

The Man in the Suit confides to the teens that he can take them to their fathers. They begin to question him, but he only responds that it's classified. He leads them to a limousine in the parking lot, not caring that Taylor is joining them.

The group is hesitant to accompany him. Normal tries to use the pepper spray, but he hits himself. The Man in the Suit places an incapacitated Normal in the car, along with Scary and Taylor. The Man in the Suit locks the doors as Link tries to run and begins to chase him in the limousine. Link evades the car and escapes down a side street, but the soccer team finds him and returns him to the Man in the Suit. With all four teens in the car, The Man begins driving.

### D.A.D.D.I.E.S. Headquarters

#### The Baby and the Elevator

The party arrives at a nondescript corporate plaza with the word "D.A.D.D.I.E.S." on the front of the building. After they exit the limousine, The Man in the Suit drives away without another word. The teens find the front door locked. As Taylor reaches for his ninja rocks, they hear the sound of bare feet walking on the pavement behind them.

They turn to see an infant in a diaper sprinting towards them as it gnashes two complete rows of adult teeth. While Taylor uses one of his ninja rocks to crack a window, Link kicks at the baby ineffectually. The baby grabs his ankle and Normal finds that it seems to absorb his foot. Scary delivers another kick, but gets her foot ensnared as well. Normal slams the mascot helmet helmet over the baby, freeing Scary and Link.

The doors to the building snap open and a voice over an intercom urges them to come inside. As they run inside, Normal tries to put the mascot helmet back on. The baby drops down onto his face and attacks him before Link wrenches the helmet off of him and kicks it over a nearby fence. Taylor hits Normal in the head with his go-bag, knocking the infant off of him.

As the group runs inside the building, a woman appears. She cries "Down!" as she throws a blue marble on the ground, which explodes into a cloud of acrid blue smoke. The baby falls from Normal's head and starts swinging around blindly at empty air as Chief Mae Hailes ushers them into an elevator, leaving the baby behind.

The elevator doors open into an austere white hallway. The Chief introduces them to the Department for the Acquisition, Destruction, Deployment, and Investigation of Extranormal Stuff. (D.A.D.D.I.E.S). The teens are mystified by the elevator; apparently, all knowledge of elevators vanished from Earth when the sky turned red. They are wary of the elevator and refuse to move on until the Chief agrees to an elaborate demonstration that they are, in fact, simply on a lower floor of the same building. They follow her up three flights of stairs and find the hallway of the ground floor.

Chief Hailes, Normal, and Scary re-enter the elevator. Link, still finding the elevator untrustworthy, takes the stairs to meet them. Taylor, on the other hand, immediately takes off and tries to explore as much of the facility as possible before getting caught. He makes it to the 11th floor, finding a room containing doors with ornate locks and a seemingly endless cavern. Taylor picks a copper lock, cursing him to think aloud "for the remainder of his next adventure".

On the other side of the door, he finds a small green humanoid named Piccolo holding an iPhone 20. Piccolo trades him Four Seconds of Fame to be freed and disappears. Taylor immediately uses the Four Seconds of Fame to try to broadcast a video (without audio) to everyone in the world. Immediately after this, he's apprehended.

#### The Video

The other three teens and the Chief arrive in her office, where Taylor has already been seated. She explains that they are fighting a war which they've already lost. She retrieves a contingency video recorded by Ron Stampler, the founder of D.A.D.D.I.E.S, stating that the world is broken but that it can be fixed. He urges the viewer not to involve his or any of the other children of the four original Dads.

The video cuts to Lark Oak, who bears an additional warning and says that they have failed to contain the Doodler. He offers three pieces of advice:

1. "If all else fails, implement Code Purple. It worked once, it might work again... you just might not like what you find."
2. Stay away from the Obsidian Door.
3. Do not involve Normal, Link, or Taylor

The video ends. The Chief informs the party that, in their fathers' absence, the teens are the new heads of D.A.D.D.I.E.S. Hailes asks them what to do. The teens are incredulous of their parents involvement, citing their careers as ice cream salesmen and librarians. Haile reveals that these were cover stories, and that all of their fathers are elite fighters who defend the world from The Doodler's chaos.

The Chief elaborates that D.A.D.D.I.E.S. was founded to fight the Doodler and his acolytes and has been protecting the world for years. As the teens struggle to come to terms with the new information, they're given badges that vibrate when there's an incursion into their world. Chief Hailes reveals that Daddy Magic is critical to how they've been fighting and that they will have to learn to harness it.

#### The Dungeon

They enter a room that contains a wall of flesh with a giant mouth - revealed to have formerly been Glenn Close's rat, Nick Junior. The mouth spits out four Daddy Warbucks, a currency for a vending machine which sells various keys, potions, weapons, armor, and lockpicks. The Chief explains that a dungeon lies beneath them containing monsters and items that have been captured by the Dads. They can use the Daddy Warbucks to buy keys that will unlock doors in the dungeon.

At the moment, they feel a surge of Daddy Magic and adopt their Character Archetypes (mechanically, they reveal their classes). They also sense a strangely old-looking child in danger at the San Dimas Elementary School. After exchanging their Daddy Warbucks for two brass keys, they head toward the dungeon. On the way there, Link takes mental note of a psychic, hyper-intelligent whale.

Inside the dungeon, they use a brass key to open a door to find the corpse of a starved lizardman. Taylor finds the Die Another Day. In a second room, they find a gold dragon and trade him the Die in exchange for The Ring of Invisibility but also Blindness.

### San Dimas Elementary School

The teens load into a champagne-colored Nissan Quest and Scary drives them to the elementary school. They hear a commotion inside, and as soon as they enter the building, the doors lock behind them. They see a line of children leading up to an opaque booth rigged with a monitor and wires, and a horrifying humanoid running on a treadmill and controlling the booth.

The monitor shows an old woman at a bank cashing a check, bringing her balance to $1M. She turns to the camera and exclaims "Time!" The humanoid on the treadmill presses a button and reveals a timer that reads: 68 years, 2 months, 3 days, 12 hours, and 34 seconds. She responds that the performance wasn't good enough and that the old woman would remain her age. The woman exits the booth, revealing that she is an elderly elementary-schooler. She joins a dejected group of old children.

The Runner turns to the children who haven't gone through the machine and asks which of them will be next to try to break the speedrun record of accruing one million dollars.

## Trivia

* Anthony says that the infant springs at the teens like the T-1000, the primary antagonist of *Terminator 2: Judgment Day.*
* In this universe, Steph Curry played basketball into his 80s and then became a professional miniature golfer and cornhole player.
* The child in danger at the San Dimas Elementary School is wearing a PAW Patrol shirt.
* The character Piccolo is a reference to the Dragonball Z character of the same name.
* The name of the currency Daddy Warbucks is a reference to the character of the same name from the comic strip *Little Orphan Annie*.

## Trivia

* This is the first episode in the podcast to take place solely on Earth.