#murph and emily are so amused

[vivitalks]

liam, attempting to flirt: says the worst possible thing

everyone else: live slug reaction

[audioaujom]

8: Festival Interlude

CHTangled Hub, < prev, next >

Uhhh hey! It’s me again!! I’m back! Sorry for disappearing again, but between my own health, graduating from college (yay!), and the holidays, my plans to be back on schedule in December got totally fucking ruined. I got absolutely swamped in stuff, so this update sat nearly finished in my drafts for nearly a month and a half. Oops? Anyway, I can’t promise “business as usual two week updates” again quite yet, but I promise there won’t be several months between updates from now on. Enjoy the (mostly) fluff! 

Word Count: 1444

--

To say that Murph hated this would be an understatement.

At the very least, Emily—despite her smugness—hadn’t egged him on since they’d left the forest, but this whole situation was just… just…!

He watched Zac excitedly run across the bridge leading into the main town square, marveling at every little thing as he passed. He bumped into several passerby, who gave him strange looks, especially when he stopped in the middle of the road to stare at the purple star banners hung between the houses with his mouth gaped wide open. Murph turned to Emily, who had also hung back to watch Zac run around, but he frowned at the amused grin she wore.

“Where did you even find this guy?” He finally settled on asking, Emily turning to glance at him.

“You wouldn't believe me even if I told you.” She scoffed, one of his eyes twitching. 

“And what makes you say that?” 

“So if I said, ‘a tower hidden deep in the woods that was nearly impossible to find’, would you buy that?” Emily smirked, the grin lopsided as she crossed her arms. Murph rolled his eyes.

“That hypothetical, no, but the truth I might be willing to.”

“...right.”

“What, really?” Murph laughed sarcastically, before noticing that Emily’s face was dead serious. His laugh turned incredulous, before stopping completely. “What, really?”

“I said you wouldn't believe me.” Emily shrugged, uncrossing her arms and jogging forward as she noticed Zac heading through the gates into town. She looked at Murph back over her shoulder, the previous serious expression long gone and replaced by her usual smirk. “And I was right.”

Murph groaned, quick to follow after glancing around to make sure there weren’t any patrolling knights who might catch sight of him. “You're insufferable.” 

“Says you.” Emily shrugged, dodging past a rogue hay cart as Murph sputtered angrily in his haste to keep up.

“What's that supposed to mean?!”

“Whoa, what’s all this?” Zac called out, voice full of wonder, interrupting the other two. They both stopped arguing at the same time, noticing that they’d not only caught up to him but that they’d stumbled right into the festival—already in full swing. 

The square itself was lit up with activity, full of people laughing and wandering around to and from the side streets lined with stalls of goods and food and games. A handful of musicians lounged between the stalls, playing lively music that spurred some people to skipping or dancing, and a group of kids off to one side of the square had some chalk and were scribbling on the cobblestones. Everyone was smiling.

“You really haven’t been to this festival before?” Murph asked, something in his stomach unsettled. Zac refused to meet his eyes, staring nervously down at the road. “It happens every year.”

“I… haven't had the chance to go before.” He mumbled awkwardly, Murph looking at Emily for help. 

She quickly brushed him off, giving Zac a big side-hug and smiling widely. “Then you’ll just have to have enough fun today to make up for all the ones you missed!”

Zac brightened up immediately. “Yeah. Yeah! Let’s do that!”

Grabbing Emily by the arm (who grabbed a very irate Murph by the arm), Zac ran over to the first stall he could see and got them in line.

They ate first, trying just about everything they could get their hands on—especially after Lou started intentionally stealing food from Murph, who tried in vain to protect his shares. Zac and Emily found it quite funny. Murph ended up more embarrassed than anything.

“I know he’s doing it on purpose!” He yelled, loud, pointing at Lou who was contently resting on Zac’s shoulder after devouring the last cube of roast sausage on Murph’s second skewer.

“Of course he’s doing it on purpose.” Zac shrugged, trying to fight down his smile. “You pissed him off.” “What did I ever do to him?!”

“You know what you did.” Emily answered unhelpfully, eyeing some bread through the nearby bakery window. “Baguette, anyone?”

“Agreeing to this was a mistake.” Murph sulked, waiting until Zac, Emily, and Lou were safely in the bakery to get himself a replacement—and scarf it down as quickly as possible before they returned.

The four then moved from game to game, discovering Lou had excellent accuracy with the darts—much to the confusion of the man running the stall. After winning several rounds in a row, Zac decided he wanted to join the children drawing, heading back out into the main square and asking them politely if he could join, to which the kids happily agreed. Emily and Murph watched from nearby, neither feeling the urge to join him.

“He’s pretty good.” Murph commented after a while, noticing the large sprawling sun Zac was tirelessly working on in the middle of the children’s drawings.

“Yeah.” Emily barely heard him, also staring at the chalk. The ceilings in the tower had been painted, along with most of the walls, and Emily was starting to suspect that Zac had done it himself. Which, to be fair, of course he would’ve. What else was there for him to do up there by himself? She just started to wonder if she was imagining things in hindsight as her memory started to pick out the same star emblem in the tower paintings, over and over.

Yeah. She was probably imagining things. She had to be.

By the time Zac sat back up, satisfied, the sun was starting to descend and a full group dance had broken out in the town square. He wiped the chalk off his hands onto his pants as he prepared to join in, before turning to Emily and Murph with a hopeful smile.

They both shook their hands. No way were either of them going to dance.

Zac frowned, but brushed it off and turned to the dancers in the square. He was quick to memorize their step patterns, easily stepping in and joining the fray, surprised by his own ability to stay on his feet and not trip over them.

“Come on!” He called, making pleading eyes at Emily—whose resolve was starting to waver. 

Noticing this, Murph took it upon himself to lightly shove Emily forward. She stumbled a little, turning to glare at Murph but not being able to hold it for long as she got swept away into the tide of dancers. Zac smiled at her as they ended up opposite each other, before winking at her as they got separated again. Emily watched in confusion as Zac stepped out of the circle—staying in time with everyone—and grabbed Murph by the shoulder, yanking him into the dance as he yelped in surprise. Her confusion quickly morphed to endearment, and she giggled as Murph cussed him out over the music, but had no choice except to join the dance with a slowly disappearing angry frown.

And then as quickly as the dance started, it was over, leaving a breathless Emily and Murph alone in the town square. The other people dispersed, but the two stayed standing across from each other, eyes locked together until Murph broke the stare first—noticing Zac wobbling on his feet and nearly falling over from where he’d followed the crowd back towards the stalls.

“Woah, you okay?” He asked, Emily hurriedly following him as they both went to either side of Zac to keep him from falling. 

“Yeah, I just… lost my footing for a second.” Zac mumbled out, not turning to look at his friends and instead kept staring at the tile portrait in front of him. He assumed the two people with crowns were the king and queen, but something in the combination of the star emblem that had been everywhere and the visage of the young prince they held in their arms made his head hurt, hard. He rubbed at his temple where the pain was the worst, before the headache started fading as Emily carefully turned him away from it and led him through town towards the docks.

“I think that's enough fun for one day.” She said softly, keeping hold of his arm in case he stumbled again. “We should go get ready for the lanterns, anyway.”

“Yeah…”

Emily frowned, lowering her voice to quietly ask, “You sure you're okay?” 

“My head just hurts a little.” Zac gave her an unconvincing smile, Lou watching them both nervously from his shoulder. “I'm really fine.”

“If you say so.” Emily agreed halfheartedly. Murph, for once, stayed quiet as he followed them through town. The sun dipped lower in the sky, and they left the excitement of the festival behind in a weirdly heavy silence.

[bevthefifth]

i am really enjoying campaign 3 so far..... i find it to be a nice blend of the best qualities of early c1 & early c2. the tone is mostly goofy and lighthearted, but there are brushes of emotional depth. elements of comedy & drama are well-synthesized, and neither is overdrawn. the PC backstories are very funny yet contain potential to be sincerely moving. i love the characters starting as “work buds”. they have an established rapport, but there’s still plenty of room for deeper emotional connections to grow.

i’m a little hesitant about how quickly they turned on mothership. the season was pitched around the premise of the PCs being synth knights— and that element is already gone. of course they were always gonna leave, but i figured it’d be at the end of the first arc, not the second episode. it tracks that emily caldwell & jake might not find it fun to be cogs in a corrupt machine, though. i do trust that the team will make this choice work out for the better. i’ll only be disappointed if they instantly fuck off into the woods in ep 3... i love ezry! i want more archanotech and bleak corporate humor!

i admit i was a little lukewarm on caldwell’s initial ep0 pitch for sol. i thought “bullywug monk” as a concept seemed was entirely aesthetically-driven, and lacked a grounded sense of character. BUT I TAKE IT BACK. caldwell has thoroughly won me over. the “washed-up YA deuteragonist” angle is really doing it for me. “harry potter & ron weasley get crushed up and spit out by the grueling reality of capitalism” is a brilliant idea, plus murph & caldwell have great chemistry as always.

emily, predictably, is a delight. her characters always have such a strong sense of life and image to them. the themes of destructive emotion and self-malleability/deception are extremely intriguing, and i love how well callie’s water imagery lends itself to their exploration. i will say that i find the “criminal family” element of her backstory far more interesting than the breakup. my one real gripe is that the mechanics of bard/paladin don’t appear to gel with the role-play side of callie’s character; with sol and calder the mechanics feel ingrained to their backstories and personalities.

at this point, i suspect that emily “i know every spell in 5e” axford is creating multiclasses mainly to keep the game fresh for herself. (she’s just that good.) for this reason, i don’t mind that callie doesn’t quite fit the official lore of bard or paladin. however, it feels weird that being unable to control her magic is a key element of her character concept— yet it isn’t reflected in the gameplay at all. 

calder is perfect and my best friend. i was a little worried about whether he’d be sufficiently different from hardwon, but jake has well assuaged that concern. as a performer, he has such a fantastic sense of comedic timing. i love a character who approaches his outwardly-hilarious problems with great personal earnestness. people who take life VERY seriously are often the funniest to observe, and calder is a great example of this. (additional observation: i am extremely amused that murph has started saying “CAL”-der to try and differentiate it from the long vowel as in “CAHLD”-well. it’s still a bit jarring, though, especially when written out.) 

in summary, i think this campaign is off to a great start, and i can’t wait to see where it goes next. murph is doing a fantastic job of synthesizing the previous two campaigns’ best qualities into a new, fresh-feeling story. the players are responding with equally electric enthusiasm, curiosity, and chemistry. man i love this show

[jq37]

so...... thoughts on the first ep?

**spoilers for start spreading the news**

What is UP you guys? The new season of Dimension 20 is out and your girl is back (implies I left, which is false) with only the hottest of takes.

Usually I vomit up my opinions with little rhyme or reason and, don't worry, I'm not changing that format any time soon. But, because of the structure of the episode, I think it'll be easier to use headings and go through each character/element of this. So let's do this y'all!

The Setting

I think the best thing you can do as a writer or a creative person in general is the make something that only you could make, you know? Like, make the thing that only someone with your specific life experiences and weird brain could have come up with. And I really think that this is that for Brennan. I already talked about this in other posts, but the version of NYC that Brennan created for this game is that to me. Like, magical NY has been done, but the specific details? Who else could have written, "The annual SantaCon is actually Santa dumping all of his defective clones into NYC where the magic barrier that keeps normals from seeing magic will disguise them and the protectors of the city will be able to deal with them"? That's so specific and so wild and so New York and so Brennan.

And I haven't lived in NY for so long but I've had one winter here and the way he describes what it's like to walk down the street during winter in the city is so real. Like smelling garbage then laundry detergent then sugared nuts from those corner stands and you're freezing and then baking in the subway in your coat. That was so so real. (I will be saying this phrase a lot so get used to it now)

And I like that he didn't make the obvious choices, you know? Like we've had three, like, magical figureheads across D20 and those are usually classic old, white, possibly British roles, you know? Like a Gandalf or a Dumbledore. But he had Aguefort in FH and now Esther and Alejandro in TUS. I just think it's cool that we're getting some different archetypes to fill these roles instead of the same dude c.p'd in again, you know?

Also, the fantasy NYC map is so dope. I wanna go back and try to read everything on it when I have the chance. 

Pete

Ally is a DRUG DEALER. I thought Pete was gonna be a stripper but he's a DRUG DEALER. Honestly, I could have figured this out sooner if I'd just checked Urban Dictionary like I did just now and found out that "plug" means "someone who is a resource for obtaining something valuable that would otherwise be difficult to obtain" or, more simply, "drug dealer". But I'm glad I didn't because it was much more fun to find out in real time.

Ally makes some character choices sometimes that are too specific to not be rooted in life experience and that whole microwave cheese monologue was one of them.

Pete's official diagnosis is that he has "a lot going on."

Ally almost won MVP line of the episode with, "Shot my tits off." Murph losing it in the background killed me almost more than the actual line.

I really, really want Pete's doctor to be a recurring character because he is wild in how wild he isn't. He has so much wild stuff happening around him and he is in a wild line of work but he seems like a relatively stable guy. I love him. Also, the completely wrong cadence he used to say, "lgbt ally" was gold.

Is Ally ever gonna have a character with a good relationship with their parents? One time? Ever?

I literally don't even know how to begin to address the wild magic trip Pete went on. Like, I don't think Ally knew what they were doing when they decided to be a wild magic sorcerer. I don't think they knew what kind of challenge they were issuing to Brennan. And after seeing the wild nonsense Brennan consistently came up with for Jer'ih'meh in Bloodkeep, I can't want to see the insanity he spits out for Pete.

"You're the one who they they wanted to play a wild magic sorcerer."

Also, Brennan just using lyrics from "New York, New York" for whatever dream demon or whatever was going on in that trip was, like, equal parts clever and hilarious. Sidenote, do you think all the ep titles are gonna be from songs about NY? I mean, there are enough songs I bet.

Pete has this thing where he constantly lands on the exact wrong part of the situation to focus on. Like later when he gets stuffed in the magic closet at the hospital and he's like, "Hospitals are so advanced, also go much is this gonna cost?" Ally's comic timing on that is always perfect.

WILD that that was the first intro. Like, way to kick off the new season with a bang.  I really wonder what this episode would have felt like if this was the last intro or if the intro for the two normal people hadn’t been right at the top. Actually now that I’m editing, I feel like we almost got the intros from least experienced w/ this stuff to most experienced. Because Pete is a total noob. Sophia is also a noob but she has met Kugrash at least once. Then you have Ricky who’s only been in this for about a year. Then Kingston who probably has more experience than Kug by years but Kug has been a rat man his whole life (presumably). Finally Misty who is probably like a BS amount of years old and steeped in this stuff. Honestly,  if I was DM’ing, I might have fudged the die rolls to look exactly like how it turned out. 

Sophia

Emily describing her character and slipping into her character voice gradually as she went on was so pro.

"Like if Fran Dresher went on an Amy Winehouse bender." I love her.

"Did you not want baby bangs?"

"She's a WHOO-OAR."

I'm gonna die if Brennan make than woman an actual succubus because of an offhanded comment.

My favorite thing is when Emily is saying some nonsense and she can barely even get through it without breaking. Also, Murph is so visibly amused by Emily's entire intro. It's great.

I love that both of the "normal" characters spent most of this episode intoxicated in one way or another.

So Emily absolutely won the episode in my eyes for coming up with one of the sickest burns I've heard and in real time. A dude tells her to read his dick and she, after only a momentary pause, says, "No I'm not gonna read your dick (beat) because I don't read short stories!" Brennan doesn't even make her roll. He just narrates her success. The table goes wild. The bar she's at goes wild. Zac specifically is cracking up. Like, I feel like this is gonna be a little bit of a deep cut reference but did any of you ever play the Monkey Island games and do the insult swordfighting? That's what that scene was. Amazing.

Murph's, like, entire posture and expression (@ 1:24ish) when Emily is saying Sophia thinks she saw a giant rat man who gave her an egg sandwich and Gatorade is total gold.

"Gotta kill some brain cells to kill the ones with the memory of Dale in them."

OK so funny story (funny to me at least) at the Fantasy High live show, I was talking to some other girls who were there and we ended up talking about how the small of a woman's back is basically the worst place you can casually touch them outside of the really bad places and how viscerally terrible it is so when Brennan said one of the trolls touched one of the girls there and Sophie/Emily was like BIG NOPE, I had a That's So Raven flashback to that conversation immediately.

Emily leaps into action...and rolls a nat 1 to fight a bunch of trolls. She actually does really well in the rest of the fight though so that's good.  

Oh, also Siobhan made everyone dope themed dice boxes!

Ricky

I hope Dimension 20 runs for the next 10 years and I hope Zac plays a good, big, doofus in every single season.

"He's basically like Superman if Superman were Japanese." Love.

Also, I love the distinction that he's 5' 8" but buff.

Ricky surrounded by a raging fire: First of all, that's a cool bear.

I like the way that Brennan skinned the cleric and paladin powers for this game so they're more about values than deities. I was wondering how it was gonna work in this setting and I think this was such a cool way to handle it.  

I really think Brennan has a great handle of presenting certain things in such a way that it's interesting for the players as well as the audience. Like, when Ricky is trying to escape the burning apartment, he puts an obstacle in his way that forces him to use his Paladin powers (to create water specifically). It's not really a hard "puzzle" or something he has to roll for, but it introduces to the audiences that he's not just a firefighter. I just think it's really cool that he's able to pull off narrative things like that without actually controlling the characters. (And, props to the players too, of course, for being so consistently entertaining).

"Mr. March."

Ricky in the middle of the winter: I'm not as tan as I used to be.

Ricky rooftop runs like a freaking superhero.

OK, this is barely related to what I'm talking about right now but it's important to me that you all know this. I commented in an earlier post that Ricky clearly had circus music playing in his head at all times and then I was like, "Hmm, I wonder what that one circus song is called." You know, the song that you think about immediately when you hear the phrase "circus music" so I looked it up and APPARENTLY it is a CZECH MILITARY MARCH known alternately as (brace yourselves) ENTRY OF THE GLADIATORS and THUNDER AND BLAZES. I kid you not. That's actually what that song is called. I called my brother and told him immediately. OK, back on topic.

Is a questing blade a thing? I feel like it's a Thing from legend or fairy tales or something but, when I Google it, I come up with basically nothing.

Does Ricky have a thing for Esther or is he just a super awkward texter and nice guy who does not want to be set up by his sister for a different reason?

I need Brennan to explain how the Santa Question works in this world. The question being, "Why don't parents freak about the gifts they're not buying?" and, side question, "Why don't poor kids get presents?" My go-to answers are always, "He Jedi Mind Tricks into thinking they bought them," and, "He has to work within each family's socio-economic means in order to not be obvious." So there are def plausible answers. But, like, this is something I like to see addressed when we're doing the "Santa is real," thing.  

"I grew up with twins and one of them was worse than the others so that makes sense."

"Is Santa good?"/"The ethics of it are alarming, I won't lie."

So, my paranoid thought for this episode is I'm a little Concerned that someone down the line (maybe Esther, but hopefully not) is going to take advantage of Ricky's Big Dumb energy and his "It's the right thing to do," mentality and manipulate him into doing something Not Great. Like, it's not based on anything besides mainlining a ton of media over the past 24 years but I'm just gonna keep an eye out.

Re the Santa/Peppermint Zombification: Hey Brennan, turn your location on. I just wanna talk.

I have to say, from the bottom of my heart, what the hell?

That creeped me out in the same way that episode of Adventure time where Princess Bubblegum (infused with the primal elemental candy energy or whatever) turned everyone into Candy people and everyone started singing Let Me Call You Sweetheart. What a weirdly specific body horror thing for me to encounter more than once. That one peppermint tooth thing is gonna haunt me. 

Kingston

I gotta say, props to Lou for pulling a complete 180 on the kind of character he picked this time around. He went from playing this super extra rich pretty boy to this salt of the Earth quasi patriarch and he's just as comfortable with it. Kingston is so real. I went to church with like 50 guys like him back home.

Why are you fighting so hard about free food Kingston? Take the free homecooked food Kingston!

The intensity of his, "I will be here until I die," was hysterical.

Mentioned this before but I love the flavoring of the cleric class where instead of being attuned to a deity Kingston is basically attuned to the entire city. Also, the perks are excellent. Bus service anywhere for free. Sign me up.

I like that Ricky's sister works at the hospital. It's a really cool potential connection for later.

"We're gonna take the thing outchyo butt. We're not gonna deny you medical services."

"Aint nothing wrong with being a freak." --Kingston Brown

Fantasy creatures having to deal with updated tech (like the Toll bridge trolls talking about EZ-passes) is one of my fave urban fantasy tropes.

"I've got a really sweet smelling man here!"

"Yeah, my tooth fell out and now it's a candy. Hey, how much is this gonna cost?" This is what I’m talking about. Priorities my dude.

I love that Kingston knows Pete's weird mob doctor. It seems like part of his deal is that he just knows everything about everyone in the city (within whatever parameters).

Pete says, in quick succession about Ricky, "I feel like he would bully me," and, "He seems like a golden retriever," which I feel are almost mutually exclusive statements.

Kugrash

Well, I asked what kind of druid nonsense was happening in Central Park and the answer is Murph apparently.

I really wish I could have been there when Murph announced he wanted to play a literal rat.

"I am the shit that feeds the flies. A dumpster druid."

"Wherever you are rat Jesus, I love you." You're killing me Brennan.

Aww Kugrash goes around feeding the homeless and stuff. He's like this grumpy ass rat man who really cares about the community.

"Santa you fucking bum." --Kugrash

"I'm sorry are you a rat?"

The idea of a roach with a hobo sack pisses me off because it's adorable but roaches are the worst.

"Is Santa dead?"/"I don't know. I'm not religious."

"Santa Claus is real and he's DEAD."

Brennan loves to use the modifiers "full" and "fully" and I have picked it up irl and in my writing.

"Let's get a little fucked up and go see if Santa's dead!"

Just that whole squirrel interaction.

The sixth borough huh? Interesting. I see you Brennan.

Also, the detail that Kug's clothes are made from old MTA vests is great.

Misty

Siobahn is playing basically exactly the character I thought she'd be playing but she's doing it so much better and more extra than I could have imagined.

"A lady would never say her age, so I won't."

Is her pianist magic or something too? I have my suspicions.

So Misty gets some kind of bard and/or fairy high from praise and adoration which is interesting.

What kind of weird, morally dubious and/or unpleasant fae thing is Misty gonna have to do soonish? It's not gonna be good. Fae stuff never is.

DON CONFETTI

"I don't study magic. I just *am* magic."

So many of these intro vignettes end with, "You don't know that...but you do know who does." Like I said before, I really love the weaving together of all the story threads to get everyone in the same place at the same time in an organic feeling way.

Also he makes all these transitions sound cinematic, like he's writing the description parts of a movie script and not narrating in person.

Public Library! I knew we'd end up here eventually but I didn't know it'd be pretty much immediately. Like, if you're going w/ the "NY is magic" premise, the library has to figure in, you know?

Emily immediately having Sophia recognize Ricky as Mr. March was such a funny and on point character decision. I love how one-off, spur of the moment lines end up being running jokes because other players pick on them and drop them an hour later.

"Are you a rat?"/"Yeah, I'm a rat man!"/"I'm sorry if that was rude."

Brennan: The lions are alive and they're boyfriends.

Misty and Siobhan both are genre savvy enough to want to nip a knights/knave door puzzle situation in the bud.

Ricky on escape rooms: I'm not very good at them but I can definitely try my hardest. (Guys, I love him so much.)

Love me some MC Escher steps.

Underrated Misty line: It's all infernal to me.

Misty's little, "Ugh" at learning they have to go to Times Square is the real NY experience.

Is this Alejandro dude gonna die? What's the over under on this dude eating it very soon?

Misty encouraging Pete to shoot Alejandro is so needlessly chaotic which is a common fae trait and I really hope this escalates.

I dunno what Murph rolled for initiative but he looks like he just shamed his entire family line.

And we’re fighting an army of crazed Santa clones next week! We have literally just started and we are already fully off the rails.  I cannot *wait* to see where we go from here if this is the *starting point*. 

[abubblingcandle]

Highlights from NADDPOD Manchester

Don’t think it was recorded but in case it is this will contain spoilers! And if not the mastery of this session must be told on.

….

Moonshine awakens a puffin - he is called Peter and is constantly having an existential crisis. Peter at various points in the session gets given Bev’s sword and sells it back to him and flies away never to be seen again holding Bev’s amulet. 

Caldwell could not roll anything but a nat 20. The dice were blessed, he even kissed one and threw it into the crowd (despite Jake trying to buy it from him) and continued on with the nat 20s. Emily and Jake even got a few too, it was so bizarre. 

Hardwon now has the animal handling proficiency (which amused Murph to no end) and got a nat 20 on befriending a giant stone ant. The ant was named Anthony but was a casualty to completing the puzzle. 

The Dwarven Daddies finally got their time in a hot tub!!

Moonshine got a nat 20 on a persuasion check to get Rin (Ren’s dad) to use a wish spell to get Hardwon a real giant ant

Bev gets a nat 20 on a religion check and turns his umbrella into a radiant holy artefact with similar properties to the amulet

Rin had imprisoned some dwarorphans to be servants and the session closed with Hardwon liberating the dwarorphans on the back of his giant ant and escaping into the sunset!