Ensorcelled

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He's a Real Loose Unit (5.01) (in main story continuity)Is He a Mickey Or A Donald? (T1.01) (in Freezo's continuity)The End Of The World RPG (Part 1) (5s.1) (in live show sequence)

 Description

There’s a very fine line between a podcast recording and a hostage negotiation in this, the 72-minute FINAL EPISODE of Season 4 of Dragon Friends. There’s a lot to wrap up. There’s been a lot of fucking around. Dave will keep you here all night if he has to. Featuring special guests Montaigne and Demi Lardner!

## Synopsis

Preparing to fly the Heart of Glass back to the Deadlands, Freezo attempts to settle his quarrel with Jeremy Scaleson (which results in Freezo shooting himself and Jeremy making a dagger out of his chungus while he is resurrecting), and then lands the ship at his tower, where the Friends contact Chunkerson the security painting and travel back to Freezo's secret lab, previously seen in *That's Not The Plot Of The Prestige*. Freezo takes the Lance and places it into the saucer near the portal, which causes the portal - revealing the city of Dweomerheart, the home of the High Elves and the home of his patron goddess, Mystra herself.

Freezo begins to remember what he has done. He has performed a powerful, forbidden ritual to imprison the goddess Mystra within the Nine Known Worlds, and then sought out the Lance to gain access to her realm and take her place. Suspicious of what is happening, the other Friends and Bassbass move to block Freezo's access to the portal. Freezo tries to persuade Jeremy that the portal leads to a library of all knowledge which could answer all questions they might have (and Dave confirms that this is actually quite true of Dweomerheart), including the location of Hyperion Max and the ability to recover Bobby Pancakes. The Friends express doubt about this, and consider the possibility of tying up Freezo while they visit the library. Meanwhile, Freezo quietly attempts to contact LOGAN and order him to crash the Heart of Glass into the tower.

The Heart of Glass slams into the tower, destroying one of the only craft that could have taken the Friends home through the planes, killing LOGAN and thousand of tinker gnomes and ejecting Bobson Dugnutt, and enabling Freezo to rush through the portal towards the gates to the Dweomerheart pantheon. He begins to yank the gates open, but when he does, the gate itself collapses into metallic chains that wrap around Freezo and the scene of the city collapses, leaving Freezo chained to a floor in the lounge of the Dragonback Tavern; lounging by the fireplace is Ostin Powerful (who they met in The Big Boys of Junkerton) who is immediately recognized by Jeremy as Hyperion Max.

Max explains that he knew it would be necessary to stop Freezo, but as he can no longer be killed, he created a prison dimension to hold him. Freezo recognises that the image of the Tavern is itself warping and glitching. He is surprised to see Bobby Pancakes is missing, and Baston shows him the fragment of Bobby's soul he has inside his necklace. Max orders Freezo to give him the Lance; Freezo refuses, asking if Max can get them back to Faerun; Max responds that he can use the Lance to create a way out of the prison for everyone except Freezo, who will be forced to remain there. Max decides to *tickle* Freezo (and Demi threatens to do the same to Michael), which causes him to drop the Lance. He then explains that in fact, only one person can leave the prison - he had only planned for Freezo to enter the vault - and inserts the Lance into the helmet he wears and disappears. The illusion fades, leaving the Friends (and his own crewmate Jeremy) in a grey cell with a single mattress and chair and an inactive portal.

Bassbass suggests that she could try using her necklace to create a portal again, as she did in Speaking Ten to Ten. The Friends debate if they should actually leave Freezo behind. Baston suggests he should give up his immortality, and Jeremy offers to free Freezo in exchange for an oath to help him have his revenge on Hyperion Max. Meanwhile, Bassbass forces the crystal from her necklace into the dish on the portal, but it spins erratically and explodes, failing to open the portal - but gradually surrounding Bassbass with a curious white energy, causing her to float into the air and gradually shift, revealing her as the goddess Mystra. She realizes that her memories of being a bard were all artificial, a side effect of the ritual that trapped her in a humanoid body. She looks pitifully at Freezo who frantically tries to apologize. Mystra explains that she will transport them home, but she will remove Freezo's immortality. She also offers that if the Friends will allow her to transfer him to Dweomerheart under her rule, she will attempt to treat him to remove the evil tainting his soul (which may take centuries), and she will resurrect Bobby Pancakes; if they refuse, she will allow them to leave with Freezo, but no mortal magic can bring Bobby back. As the others refuse to make the decision, Philge finally decides to allow Mystra to take Freezo; Philge gives him her maul, and Baston his cape.

Mystra restores Bobby Pancakes to life, and transports the Friends back home to the actual Dragonback Tavern in Faerun; but Freezo is gone, possibly forever.

## People

### Dragon Friends

* Freezo
* Philge
* Jeremy Scaleson
* Baston

### Guest PCs

* Bassbass Wihouveberry, played by Montaigne
* Hyperion Max, aka Halifax Joe, played by Demi Lardner in a goblin suit

### NPCs

* Chunkerson
* LOGAN
* Dreville the penguin butler

### Places

* The Deadlands
* The Dragonback Tavern

## Themes, tropes and running jokes

* In spite of the synopsis, this isn't actually the longest episode of Dragon Friends to date; that would be The Drunk One, which is about 8 minutes longer.
* Baffling Reference for our International Listeners: inverted. After Hing's inadvisible reference to 9/11 Montaigne suggests recording a different version of the episode for American listeners, and Dave replies, "I think they get that reference."
	+ Also an **actual** Baffling Reference when Freezo asks if Hyperion Max is "also Dave Hughes", a reference to an Australian comic known for a drawling accent and deadpan jokes.
* I make an Arcana check - Hing does not roll one for the portal, causing him some regret after Freezo passes through it.

## Quotes

* ".. the one controlling it is Freezo, now ensorcelled with the power to never die and a new.... it's a real word. Look it up. Fucking read a book." "What was the word?" "Ensorcelled." (Dave is quite correct; it is a real word.)
* "Can I bamf out of the shitty overalls?" "You can, but there's a chance you'll lose some clothing in the process." "Let's do it."
* "I swore an oath to my Captain. That oath is sacrosanct." "Which.. Captain?" "HYPERION MAX FOR FUCK'S SAKE!" ".. I didn't know he was YOUR captain. I knew he was *a* captain." "We have been playing this for a year. Do you listen to anything?" "I listen to the bits I say, obviously.."
* "There's now a second chungus, even more normal than the first."
* "I stand in front of the portal." "Wait, you don't know any of this!" "I instinctively just stand in front of it." "Jeremy stands next to Philge with the sphere in his hand." "My hands are on my hips in a really stern way." "Baston like crosses his arms and completes the Charlie's Angels tableau."
* "Jeremy, you could find where your captain is. Baston, you could find out if you really are 10 or if that's just a thing you say because you know, deep down, you're just a 6 and a half. Philge.. err.. oh."
* "Ok, special Dragon Huddle of people who aren't Freezo." "Ok, Freezo. You're left to your own devices for a moment." "NO! We're still standing in front of the portal!"
* "I am commanding you to 9/11 this tower." (Boos and howls of objection from the audience) "What! No! In Season 3, Dave the DM had the chance to make this a world where 9/11 never happened. And he chose, he chose to make this a canonical world where many innocent people died in a horrific terror attack, so don't boo ME!" (This refers to I've Never Seen a Gooch That Couldn't Be Improved, in which Dave was asked if 9/11 had happened in the Shadowrun universe.)
* "Soon you find yourself, Freezo, you're a moment ahead of them, they're racing towards you but almost as if in slow motion, for you are standing at the gates and you know once you open those gates power beyond imagination will be yours." "Dragon Friends, let's go." "Yep, let's go through those gates." "And the moment you touch the gates you realize that something is wrong." "Oh, FUCK OFF, Dave! FUCK OFF!"
* "I got into the good holding place and exploded my hat."
* "You know what the irony of this is? Is that Freezo should have done a fucking Arcana check on the gates."
* "Freezo, it sounds like you're about to get a tickling, want me to hold that Lance?"
* "We *should* have killed Hyperion Max. We got blamed for it. Turn out they were a dick."
* "He has been a bit of a pain in the butt. But he's *our* pain in the butt."
* "I don't know if Mystra recalls this, but Philge did give her a Sprite earlier. Truly the drink of the gods."

## Table Talk

* "When we asked Hing to name one song from Rocky Horror, he said the Time W*alk*." "It's just a step to the left, and then a step to the right, and then another step to the left, and then another step to the right.."
* "In an alternate dimension I smell a fuckin' nerd." "Demi, you're wearing a body sock doing comedy at a live Dungeons & Dragons podcast."