#I stg if /for whom the bell tolls/ isn't the title of this episode

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e34: for whom the bell tolls

oh god it's less than 4 hours — ~3h30m accounting for intro, ads, & recap

the fuckin' NordVPN ads are getting lore recaps now??

I mute these because my secondhand embarrassment goes off the charts but just watching it is enough of an experience I feel like

I..... hm. I'm definitely feeling some kind of way about what, if anything, the Bells Hells merch releases say about who's going to survive this episode.

//

WHO'S IT GONNA BE

ooooo everyone's at the table

"Fresh Cut Grass. In this pure, endless void of all color, you feel the psychic pulse opens a flood of memories... older memories. An endless cloudscape, a skyline of lavender spires, prismatic cobblestone streets, thousands of metallic beings cheering, celebrating. A dark room, a man you fear of short gray and blonde hair shouting, none of this imagery makes sound — but you know there's anger in his heart, the intent, the defiance... a kindly, older noblewoman. You like this woman. You grant her understanding — she smiles. She frowns. She is gone."

"Chetney. Within the endless light, you feel your very soul pried open, memories spilling forth, gentler times... Diana and her laugh, Freudel and her patience... within your belly, a hunger stirs. An itch hits your skin. An iron smell fills your nose, a howl pierces your ears, you look up to the full flowing red moon of Ruidus above you, from its ruddy light streaks a single beam of pure crimson light that envelops you. You let it wash away the sadness and you give in to the beast... it sees you now, and it's found common ground."

"Ashton. Enveloped in shadowless infinity, too bright to blink, you're a child. You were worried as others rush to finish something, you do not hear your elven father as he shouts orders excitedly. Your mother kisses your head, points ahead as the many people take their places around the vibrant glowing gateway. Your father places leather mask and headdress on his face... it begins."

"Laudna. Here beyond the edge of death, the light envelops you. You remember, soundlessly, the lush forests of the Parchwood, you remember the warmth of the fire under the hearth... dinner. An impossibly long, decadent table. Watchful guards, the dark lord and lady speaking wordlessly, the dread, her gaze meets yours. A gaze that never stops. You see her at the edge of your vision, always, her shape creeps beyond every blink and her words linger with her own. You fear you may lose yourself. Are you yourself? Or just her, incubating? I am of his blood. I will endure. My will is unrelenting. You are my vessel in life, unlife, and beyond. I will endure."

"Imogen. Your entire body and spirit shakes into energy, a cosmic mass of vibration and power. You feel your ody burn, unstable, wanting to explode, you wince and hold yourself with all your might. You're walking, toppling over a rock, a hand catches your clumsy form. You cry loudly, silently, as your eyes meet hers, her lavender hair tied up over her ears. Her smile calms your tears. She speaks to you, wordlessly, in your mind you know everything is alright. She looks concerned, her face snaps away into the distance, an intensity. You open your eyes and there in this vacant space, crackling before you, you see Otohan, staring back. Her body crackling with the same type of energy as yours. You are a true predator. A gift in their image. Few can be as strong as we can. To deny your nature is to be consumed by it. To embrace it is to master your own fate. I am proud of you. The voice of Liliana echoes in your mind — run, Imogen. Run."

"The bell tolls, and looms soon enough. Come, and create something beautiful with us. [I reach out and try to blast her.] She blinks away into the light darkness, and the white blinks out. The void envelops you. You hear the sound of a thousand, ten thousand stones and bricks hitting the ground. The wind hits your face, the sand as you come down to your feet. Looking around you, you stand in the streets of Bassuras once more. In the vicinity, where a number of buildings stood, most of them are gone. There is a circle of earth pushed away. And in that moment, your companions appear where they were, as they were."

ASJHGDKJSHDGFSKJLFJDLSKGH

MATTHEW MERCER

Natural 1 death saving throw on the Ruidus die.

That's it. Someone's dead. They don't have enough spell slots.

"I imagine it would be... confusion. Flashes of all the powerful women in her life. Imogen. Fearne. Her mother. Delilah."

"As the darkness carries you to whatever threshold lies beyond, as the dark curtain begins to fold in, you feel her arms wrap around you as Delilah embraces you from behind. Worry not, child. Death is but a waiting game."

Okay. FCG is getting Fearne up. Thank fucking god. We have a chance here.

The first two rolls of the episode were a 1 on a death save and then a 20 on a perception check. If that doesn't embody this entire sequence—

Imogen has the gnarlrock. She has the gnarlrock and Delilah is still in there. I swear to god if this is some kind of repeat of Laerryn gifting a spell slot to Quay—

Thank you, Travis, for the mental image of a revivify cockring.

oh my FUCKING god

FCG rolls a 7 + 3 WIS against a DC of 10.

She felt herself being pulled by the Unseelie who "were following [her] through mirror after mirror." Behind her, she sees a "dull green sliver of a moon, a blackened hills cape of tangled jungle and thorns, brambles and eyes, so many wicked hungry eyes waiting for you. And behind those eyes, darkness. Uncertainty. Cold oblivion." And Fearne's up.

"Can you call Jiana Hexum?" "Fuck Jiana Hexum!" "Call her, tell her I'll do anything. Tell her whatever she needs."

Liam just fuckin' chugging the rest of his coffee is such a mood

GNARLROCK TIME LET'S GO

"I know you're there you bitch, I know you still want her." The rock is on Laudna's chest.

Fearne doesn't have a diamond, but Ashton does. 18 seconds remain.

I hate this. I hate it. I HATE it. But it's so good.

12 seconds remain.

Sending to Delilah: "You better bring her back. I know you want to be in this world, and she's your only way here. Get your ass down here and bring her back!" Poor thing. I would if I could. But I ask you to bring her back too — for both of us.

The coin has spoken. (I'm not convinced that Fearne didn't lie about the coin flip.)

Fearne rolls a 13 + 4 against a DC of 10.

"Orym. The tension has passed, and a calm peace comes over you. There's this shadow, this looming darkness of regret and anxiety... it gives way to the sounds of the soft breeze of Zephrah. You feel a presence you've missed for a bit. As you turn from the shadow, amongst the various cherry blossom branches and the wind that blows in this soft dreamscape before you, you see Will. Just looking at you. And you want nothing more than to stay here. And in that moment in relinquishing to whatever the next life may be, you hear Fearne's words echo out from above. The soft dream begins to fade a moment and you glance up into a shaft of light. Her words call out to you, and you're torn. You look back down to Will who looks back to you, and his voice echoes, you're not done. [I really wish I could stay.] I'll still be here. [I miss you so bad.] There will be a time. I look forward to it. [Say hi to Derrig for me. Say hi to dad.] I will. He reaches out and embraces you. Like a hot spring that just envelops you, you feel the warmth and light of the connection you've missed for so long. Now, go. And he throws you up towards the light. As you drift upward, you watch the tree begin to fade, you see his face begin to fade, and you feel the sting of dust and sand against your cheek." And Orym's up.

Sprigg, the Vecna fights, Vax's mother, Scanlan, Molly, Caleb and Essek, Caleb at his parents' graves, Cad's divine intervention — nothing. But Orym got me, man. He got me.

To Joe's!

And to the break.

//

Liam: *pats Orym on the head* this halfling can fit so much survivor's guilt in him

Ohohohoho, Imahara has a secret cellar! It's a little storage space with raw materials, parts, tools, etc.

Man, the perception checks this episode have been on point.

....there's a hidden door in the basement that hasn't been opened in a very long time. Overgrown with roots.

Aaaaah. So Treshi hired Ira to create dangers in the city, which in turn was intended to spur the Quorum to hire the Paragon's Call. Ira came to him, but Treshi was getting pressure from Otohan to establish the Call in Jrusar.

23 intimidation from Orym!

Treshi was doing it to rise in the ranks of Jrusar's nobility structure, and if he did all the shipments successfully, Otohan would clear his name in Jrusar. The shipments were coming from Wildemount by way of the Menagerie Coast to the Osmit Sea to Jrusar, where Treshi took charge of getting them to Bassuras. So that shipment wasn't going to Jrusar — it had come from Jrusar, and was going to an external site.

Hexum held on to the Cerberus Assembly crates and the crates with the dunamis potions until it was time to ship them to Bassuras, to disrupt the chain and make it harder to trace.

It began slowly "years ago" and had been ramping up in recent years.

The secret door appears to be locked, but there's no overt nob, just a pull handle. Chet opens it with a 26, and there's a tunnel beyond that smells musty, like minerals. It reminds Chetney of the part in the Deathwish Run when they went into a cavern.

The crates labeled "Treshi" contain a whole bunch of dunamis potions.

The vials are roughly the same size and shape of the things inside Otohan's backpack. So these things are most likely advanced forms of the potions of possibility.

I love the fact that they've just..... collectively forgotten that Fearne has proficiency with thieves' tools.

.........oh. Matt's reaction to FCG mentioning that Percy and Vex might be able to bring Laudna back makes me absolutely certain that neither of them would hesitate for a moment to kill Laudna if they knew about Delilah. Especially when compared to his reaction to Orym mentioning Keyleth.

Hm. So Orym definitely knows that Keyleth can bring people back, and that it's not super expensive to her (500gp and a 5th level slot). Which begs the question— why wouldn't he ask her to bring Will back? Did something happen to Will that made that impossible, like with Evandrin?

Oh. Or maybe she did try and the ritual failed. The ritual that Orym would've been a primary contributor to. And that'd just add more grief and guilt.

Chetney literally crafting new thieves' tools out of wood scraps instead of disabling the trap is so on-brand

The box is opening

It's refined residuum. A precisely calculated and exact amount of refined residuum.

Keyleth has been working with Percy and Vex to make sure that residuum doesn't fall into the wrong hands, so the fact that it's here is very concerning to Orym. He also knows that it's used in the amplification of certain forms of arcana.

So, what? Is Otohan using this to create very specifically sized weavelenses? To amplify the effects of the potions of possibility? Or is this something like what Delilah was doing with Ioun's temples, trying to amplify a summoning ritual? And where the fuck is the Cerberus Assembly getting it from?

Okay, somebody remind me to come back to this later — but this residuum is an absolutely perfect allegory for the Bells Hells as a party, especially the way Matt described it.

Chetney did hard drugs in Hupperduke, canon

Holy fuck, another nat 20 perception check! Chet is on fire with these!

Identify on the gray liquid: "This is a potion of possibility. When you drink this potion, you gain two fragments of possibility, each of which looks like a tiny grey mote of energy that follows you around a foot away from you. Each fragment lasts for 8 hours or until used. [Mechanics are the same as the Fortune's Favor spell.]"

Sooooo potions of possibility + residuum = whatever Otohan had going on? Yeah?

The crate they got has 6 more potions, so they have a total of 8.

FCG has never encountered dunamancy before — the vials don't fit into any established school of magic, it sort of sits and drifts outside the standard schools.

Oooooh. Imogen didn't have a dream about Laudna walking into the storm. And she "feels a buzz lingering that doesn't quite subside, like the faintest of butterflies that continues to turn in your stomach." Bro. Matt remotely added a feat to her D&D Beyond profile.

Now that is super interesting. That means that every single one of these people has a chance to gain additional feats through "fateful moments" (which Matt details in EGtW) that happen during the course of the campaign. That's super fucking cool. I bet it's a homebrew, because she already has telekinetic and telepathic wouldn't make sense (she already gets very similar abilities from her class), but also, mystic conflux or spell driver could be really cool.

Oh my god that's amazing, FCG built a toolbox for Chetney and Sam actually bought (/made?) one to give to Travis adkjfhsglsdjl

In that memory, Ashton's father's vestments for whatever ritual that was is exactly the same as the Hishari armor they found in the Twilight Mirror Museum. The headpiece looks slightly damaged.

"shari" is a suffix with roots in a word pertaining to general elementalism. The root could pre-date the Calamity, or it could be derived from the Gau Drashari name.

In Zephrah, the Hishari village is used as a tale to spook people from toying with the elements when they don't know what they're doing. It was a village of people who delved into things that they didn't understand and couldn't control. "What the Hishari village did was reckless, and they paid for it." Ashton was too young to remember what happened on that day, but they watched "everything go, everything rip apart... wind and light and people flinging through the air, cracking, breaking. I woke up wandering the dead lands outside the city [Bassuras], and they put me in the Greymoore home."

Which means that the Hishari village was somewhere in the Hellcatch Valley close to Bassuras — e.g. there is potentially a massive elemental rift in the Hellcatch, where a leyline nexus may be moving, and where the Paragon's Call might be shipping construction materials, residuum, and dunamis potions to.

"Power is power. What you do with it is up to you. We're gonna leave, we're gonna lick our wounds, but you've got us. Let's just get our of here and help her."

Somebody get FCG a component pouch please

"You focus on her body, her corpse, whatever earthly connection remains with the absconded spirit. You complete the ritual and there's a flash of orange light around her, and none of you pick it up, but you do: a weird sense that the spell definitely headed something off at the pass, and now she rests for the next 10 days."

o h n o.

I can't tell if that means her body would decompose faster than normal to a point where raise dead wouldn't work due to her being a Hollow One, or if Delilah was slowly trying to take over her body slowly. Either way, gives a completely different meaning to "death is a waiting game."

That thing is definitely going to be attached to the front of the flask/can next week