#they take the group of thieves back to the town to chuck them in jail but skell '''accidentally'''' loses track of the one that didnt fight

[katrinawritesthings]

OT5; resume game; PG

listen... more d&d au

“When did you even get an antimagic spell?” Key asks. She sounds more impressed than anything by this point and Jonghyun snorts.

“Two levels ago, when you told me it was useless, remember?” he asks. Jinki doesn’t even have to look up to know that Key is blushing and Jonghyun is smirking.  “Also,” Jonghyun adds. “If this works, then I’m technically the one that beat him, and the rules that all of you fuckos set up say that that means that I get to decide what to do with him. So don’t hurt him.”

part 1

ao3

As the small group of adventurers advances further into the forest, the phoenix elf spots a clearing in the distance. She signals to the others and as one, they sneak quietly through the trees until they have a clear view. Set up in the loose grass and small boulders, a group of six humans lounge lazily around a fire, laughing and talking with smug pride. None are watching the trees and they have bags and boxes full of what appear to be the stolen artifacts from the city’s museum.

“I can get one between the eyes from here,” Yavè says, hand confident on the crossbow under her robe.

“We’re supposed to capture them alive,” The Double M-C growls. Their bear claws flex at their sides and Yavè sighs, crossing her arms.

“You’re right,” she mutters. “I can get one through the leg from here,” she offers instead.

“We can just… walk up and ask them to give the stuff back nicely.” Skell’s words are small, but louder than they have been, his growing confidence and experience showing in his actions. Yavè rolls her eyes, but Ace nods slowly.

“Let’s do that, but more… intimidating,” it says with a raised eyebrow and a little smirk in The Double M-C’s direction. The half-bear grins slowly back, lifting one big bear arm to point at the tree creature.

“I like that plan,” they say. “Come on.” They head off towards the clearing, leading the party with no stealth straight through the trees. They growl in the back of their throat and rustle the trees as they pass. Ace stomps its heavy oak legs extra hard against the ground, so the earth trembles slightly with each step. Yavè pulls off her hood and casts an illusion on herself, turning her already fiery colored hair into what looks like real flames and giving her eyes a deep red hue. In the clearing, the humans all startle and look around in a panic.

All at once, the party bursts through the trees. With an enormous, earsplitting roar, The Double M-C bares their claws and their fangs in a display of power that sends one human stumbling to the ground in fear.

“Draw your weapons and fight, theives!” they bellow, towering over the humans and snarling down at them. On their right, Ace thumps its huge wood club menacingly into its palm. On their right, Yavè draws a fire-tipped arrow and trains it expertly on the furthest human.

From the back, Skell scoots forward silently. Peeping his pink-haired head out from behind The Double M-C’s furry elbow, he waves gently and gives them a small smile.

“But, you don’t have to fight if you don’t want to,” he calls.

(“Jonghyun.” Minho hisses. Their hand is clenched around their dice, eyes closed as they take a deep, steadying breath. Jinki watches with the utmost amusement as they open their eyes and turn to face Jonghyun’s pout. “Will you please. For once. Let me do this.”

“What?” Jonghyun whines. “I’m not stopping you.”

“Yeah, but you kind of ruin the effect,” Taemin says. It shrugs lazily in its pillow pile. Key nods and Jonghyun grumbles at all of them, holding his pillow tightly under his chin.

“Minho, roll for intimidation with an advantage. Jonghyun, persuasion,” Jinki says, pausing their hundredth argument for just a moment. Both of them glance at him; Minho rolls two dice and Jonghyun grabs his.

“Twenty-four,” Minho says, and then, “I’m a big giant bear person,” they whine. “Like, half of my points are in intimidation. Let me intimidate people.”

“You can intimidate people,” Jonghyun huffs. He jiggles his die in his hand and tosses it into what he calls his lucky cup instead of the stimmy cup he’s been casually throwing them into the whole game. “I just want them to know that they don’t have to fight. They can just surrender. I’m helping.” He frowns at the outcome of his die and tips it back into his little tray. “Nine,” he tells Jinki. Jinki nods at both of them, picking up his own die to roll for the humans while Jonghyun and Minho keep up their bickering. They’re cute. As he rolls for each human, he snorts and smothers a grin in his hand at a particularly bad number.

“Okay, so,” he says, interrupting whatever point Minho was bringing up.)

Almost every human yells and stumbles back in terror. The sight of the half bear, half human, a monstrosity on their own, is enough to have them trembling in their boots. Two of them back up even more, turning around to flee, but their leader catches them by the elbows.

“Stay here and fight, you cowards,” they snap. They seem to not have been affected as much by the party’s entrance. They’re a seasoned veteran at this kind of thing and have seen worse, as evidenced by their firm stance. Their companions, however, have hands that shake as they reach for their weapons. One of them doesn’t even draw a weapon at all; with a glance at their leader, and a meaningful glance at Skell, they slowly slip sideways, slinking behind one of the larger boulders.

Skell’s eyes light up in delight and at his first opportunity, while the others are fighting, he jogs over there to meet them.

“Are you hurt at all?” he asks, holding out a worried hand to the shaking thief. “I can heal you,” he offers brightly.

(“Oh my fucking god,” Minho mutters.)

~

“You know, I’m sure you have more fairy in you than just your hair. Your smile is dazzling.”

“Yeah. And your sweet spirit is positively angelic.”

“We can’t thank you enough for convincing those hunters to leave our village alone.”

“Ooh.” Skell smiles wider, cheeks flushing as pink as faer hair, and nuzzles up to one of the many tall, handsome, suave boys speaking to fae at the bar. The village is celebrating their party’s victory over the attackers in the inn and fae’s having a lovely time surrounded by admirers. Fae draws invisible little lines on one man’s broad chest and looks up at him through faer lashes. “Tell me more about how pretty I am,” fae says.

At the other end of the bar, The Double M-C snorts, shakes their head, and returns to the story they were telling to the group of young children gathered around them. Yavè rolls her eyes and asks one of her own crowd of admirers to get her another drink. Ace sits moodily in the corner, arms crossed and frown directed towards the tallest of Skell’s babes. As they all go about their business, from the entrance, a--

(Jinki stops suddenly in his description when Taemin slips him a folded up note. He takes it, glances at Taemin’s little grumpy face, and reads it.

“I’ll give you five dollars if you make your hot self-insert bartender kick them out,” it says.)

~

“Okay, we’re just gonna barge in there, take out the bodyguards, kill the lord, get out, and--”

“What the fuck? No, we can’t kill him.”

“That’s what we’re supposed to do, we’re supposed to kill the asshole so the village can live in peace from his reign.”

“Okay, technically, maybe they want us to kill him, but they didn’t say we had to. We’re gonna tie him up and throw his ass in his own garbage jail.”

“Oh my god, this is going to take forever.”

“Well sorry I’m not a murderer--”

“It was your idea to take this fucking sidequest in the first place--”

“The people needed our help--”

“Lets just fucking get in there already oh my god--”

(“Hey, uh, real quick,” Jinki interrupts Jonghyun and Key’s hissed argument with the most amused hand between them. They frown at each other for another moment before turning to Jinki. “Are you two having this conversation, like, in the game?” he asks. He gestures at the little ambush setup they have on the table between them.

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Key says. “Yavè is liking Skell less and less by the moment.”

“Of course,” Jonghyun says. “Skell thinks Yavè is being a big anus.”

“Ace wants to hurry up so it can eat,” Taemin mumbles.

“Yeah, and I feel like I’m like. Really worried, waiting at the inn for them to come back,” Minho adds. “Can y’all please hurry up and finish breaking the law?” They’re pouting really hard and Jinki chuckles softly.

“Okay, well,” he says, getting back to his point. “Since you two are arguing out loud, then, uh.”)

As the two’s bickering grows louder and more intense, the secret door behind the lord’s office is swung suddenly open. Three of his bodyguards, huge and intimidating, glare menacingly down at the party, swords drawn.

“Shit,” Yavè hisses.

“She was the one that wanted to kill you,” Skell says immediately, pointing at the elf.

(“I’m not taking you to the movies this weekend anymore,” Key hisses at Jonghyun.)

~

“I hate,” Ace growls as it sucks down one of its last healing potions. The magic of the drink bubbles and fizzes inside of it as it heals its wounds, but it doesn’t feel nearly as satisfying as they usually do. Ace peeps out from where it took cover behind the rocks to watch the other three try yet again to harm the warlock.

Yavè fires a perfectly aimed arrow from her crossbow, then casts her volley spell to duplicate it hundredfold. Every magic arrow rains down on the warlock with grim accuracy, but with a great acrobatic effort, they dodge and weave through the brunt of the attack. The ones that do strike him are taken easily, their magical force lessened and their damage partially healed by his many protective spells.

The Double M-C, freshly healed by Skell, hurls themselves again towards the wizard with a fierce roar. A reckless charge, they’re able to get closer to the warlock than anyone has yet so far, but still are blasted back by his powerful magic at the last moment. As they tumble back towards the rocks and pillars of the cave, their roar is one of defeat.

At the third round of repeated failures, Skell sneaks a peek out at the wizard from behind his own rock and huffs. “This is garbage,” he mutters.

(“Alright, listen, wait, Jinki,” Jonghyun says. Jinki turns to him with a hum of curiosity, trying not to grin too wide as his frustrated little pout. He shouldn’t be having this much fun with this, but the others are just having garbage rolls today and it’s way too funny. This really shouldn’t be that hard of a battle. Jonghyun reaches over to their little figures on the table and pokes the warlock gently.

“This fucko,” he says. “He’s like. Some scrawny old fuck that’s been living in a cave for too long, right?” he asks. Jinki snorts. That’s one way to put it.

“Basically, yeah,” he says, because it’s not like Jonghyun is wrong.

“He’s gonna be splattered all over the cave when I’m through with him,” Key mutters darkly. Jinki throws an amused smirk her way. Her patience ran out several turns ago.

“And, like,” Jonghyun says, ignoring her little comment. “He doesn’t have any actual weapons, right? Just his hands?”

“Yeah,” Jinki shrugs. “He had a staff but you all burned it, remember.”

“Mmhmm,” Jonghyun hums. He pouts at the little wizard figure, finds his own figure, counts the little spaces of distance between the two. “Okay,” he says. “So, I’m gonna-’’

“Wait, are you actually gonna attack him?” Minho asks. Their eyes are huge as they look at Jonghyun and Jinki honestly has to agree. What the fuck. Jonghyun curls up smaller under everyone’s disbelieving looks, but picks up his little figure anyway.

“It’s not like you guys are getting anywhere,” he mutters. “Jinki, I’m gonna cast an antimagic sphere on myself, run at him, like, full speed, and then just. Jump on his back.”

He hops his little figure across the table, struggles for a moment with balancing it on top of the wizard’s, and then just kind of sets it behind him. Jinki stares blankly at him. Holy shit. The other three are looking at Jonghyun in much the same way. Oblivious to their silence, Jonghyun fixes up the two figures on the board and then looks up at Jinki.

“What do I roll for that?” he asks.

“Um,” Jinki says. Uh. He doesn’t know. Constitution maybe?

“Are you serious?” Taemin asks. Jonghyun huffs at it with a little nod.

“Yeah?” he says. “All this fucko can do is magic. Just walk up to him and capture him gently while I’m blocking all of his spells and shit. I wanna get out of this cave.” He jiggles his die impatiently in his hand as Jinki flips through his guide book to figure out what attribute is best for this.

“When did you even get an antimagic spell?” Key asks. She sounds more impressed than anything by this point and Jonghyun snorts.

“Two levels ago, when you told me it was useless, remember?” he asks. Jinki doesn’t even have to look up to know that Key is blushing and Jonghyun is smirking.  “Also,” Jonghyun adds. “If this works, then I’m technically the one that beat him, and the rules that all of you fuckos set up say that that means that I get to decide what to do with him. So don’t hurt him.”

“That doesn’t--”

“They are the rules,” Minho sighs. Key huffs and crosses her arms in defeat.

“It won’t work anyway,” she grumbles. “Nothing has been working today.”

“Roll for dexterity,” Jinki mumbles, pointing vaguely in Jonghyun’s direction. He slowly closes his book as he finishes reading. Dexterity now, and then it’ll be constitution every turn to stay on. Yeah. Jonghyun tosses his die onto the table and when it settles, everyone kind of just stares blankly at the first twenty anyone besides the warlock has gotten all session.

“Plus four,” Jonghyun adds, pointing at the numbers on his character sheet.)

Skell takes a deep breath, casts an antimagic sphere on himself, sprints across the cave, jumps effortlessly onto the wizard’s back, and clings there.

(“Like a cute little koala,” Jonghyun adds, poking his figure with a grin.)

Skell clings to the wizard like a cute little koala.

~

“And I owe all of this to you, Skell. Sweet, sweet, lovely Skell.” Jo’s wicked smirk turns wider, more natural, more charming, a shadow of the old smile he used to give Skell before he turned into an asshole. Now it just feels like a mockery. He walks up to Skell and caresses his face, laughing softly when Skell jerks away. On the rocky mountainside cliff they’ve been backed up on, Skell stumbles, almost losing his balance, before Jo tuts and yanks him a single step away from the ledge.

“Don’t leave me yet, babe,” he chides. “You still have to watch me take the orb and harness its darkness to take over the world.” He backs up lazily towards the Darkness Shrine and holds his hands out, relaxed and confident and smug. “You should have listened to your little friends when they told you not to trust me,” he says.

(“Yeah. Jonghyun,” Minho says. Jonghyun rolls his eyes, squeezing his pillow close to his chest. Jinki props his chin in his hand lazily as he watches the other three glare at the soft little bub.

“Remember when I told you that your hot new boyfriend was just using you?” Key asks. Her voice is light and casual with just enough bite to get her point across.

“Remember that time a few days ago when he literally just suddenly screamed and grabbed his head and took, like, thirty points of psychic damage for no reason at all, and Jinki said that obviously the gods were displeased with him for something?” Taemin asks. It doesn’t do as good of a job at keeping the annoyance out of its voice.

“But no,” Minho says dramatically. “Jo’s great. He’s soooo romantic. He helped us fight sometimes. He just gets intense headaches every once in a while. Nothing’s wrong with Jo.” They lean really close to Jonghyun, trying to stare him down as he stares blandly at the table. “Do you think Jo’s gonna let us fall to our deaths, or will his charming gentleman’s heart grant us the mercy of killing us first?”

“Alright, can you, like, get out of my space, please?” Jonghyun asks. He’s perfectly calm and pleasant, flapping a gentle hand at Minho until they sit up straight with a huff. “It’s fine,” he says. The other three groan, probably because he sounds exactly the same as he has sounded for the past in-game week of them telling him that Jo was bad news. “It’s still fine,” he says. “It’s always been fine.”

“Explain to me how this is fine,” Taemin huffs. Jonghyun huffs lightly right back.

“I mean, if you would let me do my thing instead of whining at me, you would see,” he says.

“What thing,” Key scoffs.)

“Jo, honey,” Skell says sweetly. He takes several small, shuffling steps forward through the snow and the rope binding his feet, smile playful on his face. Jo pauses in his dramatic reaching for the orb, turning to look at him with a cocked brow.

“Stay back, cutiepie,” he says. “I would hate to have to kill you first.”

“Oh, I know, baby, but,” Skell pouts. “Can I have one last favor?” he asks. “Pretty please? For me?” He bats his eyelashes prettily and Jo laughs. He thinks it’s absurd that Skell still thinks that he actually ever cared. Still, the little pink haired human is absolutely adorable. One last request couldn’t hurt.

“Sure, kitten,” Jo shrugs. “What is your dying wish?” He hops off of the shrine with his arms crossed in front of him. Skell smiles, bites his lip, giggles cutely.

“Let us--”

(“Oh, wait, Jinki--he has more than fifty hit points, right?” Jonghyun asks quickly. Jinki cocks a brow, checks his notes, and shrugs innocently. Telling is cheating. Jonghyun huffs. “Come on, Jinki, you know I don’t want to accidentally kill him,” he pouts.

“How the fuck…?” Taemin mumbles. Jinki sighs and shrugs again, but this time with a little nod. He can’t say no to that face.

“Yeah, he has more than fifty,” he says. Jonghyun smiles bright and wiggles happily.

“Okay, anyway.”)

“Let us tie you up right now,” Skell says clearly.

(“Really? That’s your fucking plan?” Key hisses.

“Shh,” Jonghyun hisses back.)

Jo looks at Skell blankly for a moment, and the bursts into loud laughter. He holds his stomach, bends over, wipes a tear from his eye.

“Wow,” he says when he composes himself. “I thought you were going to ask for a final kiss or something.” He grins, steps forward, pecks Skell’s cheek, and backs up. “Not gonna happen, babe,” he grins. Skell just smiles pleasantly back as Jo turns back to the shrine.

Two steps up, Jo stops suddenly, stiffens, clutches his head, and screams, just like that time a few days ago. As soon as that happens, Skell pushes all of his concentration into another spell that hits Jo with force. Mid-scream, mid-horrible writhes of agony, Jo stops, frozen in place by the magic.

Skell turns quickly back around to his other three companions.

“Hurry up and get yourselves free, this freezing spell only lasts for a minute and I don’t know if a second one will work,” he says.

(“Holy shit,” Minho whispers.

“I told you it was fine,” Jonghyun grins.

“I thought you didn’t like to hurt people?” Key asks. She’s staring at the five damage dice Jonghyun rolled onto the board with wide eyes, and Taemin is giving Jonghyun the same look. Jonghyun shrugs, a sweet little smile on his face.

“I don’t like liars,” he says. His pleasant tone is betrayed by just a touch of a hard edge.

Jinki had known about Jonghyun’s secret curse plan the whole time, but it’s at that moment that he really remembers that chaotic good players play by their own rules just as much as the evil ones do.

“Holy shit,” Minho whispers again.)

[mcvfd]

S04E01: History Channel Arena Combat

The gang get alien abducted, and their new boss is a real jerk. Kanye tries to flirt. Averlyth meets Bane. Everyone dies. (They got better!)

TL;DR: After a bit of downtime following the Thieves Guild competition, the gang is abducted by the History Channel, brought to the future on a space station and forced to fight in an arena combat reality show. After being beaten to death, they wake up in a prison cell, and the security chief taunts them with the idea they will be forced to fight and die every night for a television show, only to be cloned and forced to do it all again the next day. But one of the other gladiators wants to enlist the gang to help her send everyone back to their proper timelines — by blowing up the space station.

Background

We were gonna fight Assault Bae for stealing all our money but instead we kinda agreed with him and put him in charge.

What happened during the month of downtime?

Averlyth: Going with other gangs (continuing to inspire fear) on missions, acquires 3 contacts in other gangs that could hook us up with stuff in the future.

Carlos: attempted to train various crows in town to pickpocket the townspeople and bring him trinkets. Now he has crows that occasionally get him what he wants and also occasionally alert the police instead.

Kanye: spent his time acquiring knowledge, trying to learn how to make his weapon stay on fire. He's gained a new respect of fire ever since the flamethrower (and maybe also the Burnie Cinders thing). He now has +1 to attack and damage with a single weapon.

Nissa: Trying to improve skills, acquires 3 information tokens that she can use arbitrarily in the future (she “happens to recall” a factoid).

Satura: Trying to learn magic from the Ragin’ magin’s because she already fights well. Through intense training and memorization, she has gained an additional prepared spell. She has learned ensnaring strike.

Um: His therapist said to join a group, would make life more fulfilling. Spends the time trying to be a better person (or more neutral than evil).

One day we're all abducted by aliens (cannot confirm on anal probe).

Session Start

Abducted and sold to a gladiator arena! 3 dozen combatants, gravity isn't quite the same, and there's no sky, only stars and planets.

The "arena" looks as if it used to be a park. There is a sealed door at the far end, with flaking paint saying "Cargo Tunnel". Another marks "Elevator is closed" with a glowing red lock, another "Airlock" is barred up tight. There's "Security".

There's a sign behind us, with scrolling text and a grid of moving images. The text contains pictograms, from possibly hundreds of thousands of players.

A halfling we immediately dislike announces our presence ("The famous Multimaster County Volunteer Fire Department") on the History Channel Fighting Show Thing, every "bird" (camera drone) turns towards us, many crude gestures and cheering faces go down the screen, and we roll for initiative.

There are 36 dudes. Carlos Fears 3 of them and they make a beeline for the opposite direction. Nissa shoots a long-distance fart, perfected from her time in a library. 3 dudes will run into it.

Kanye wields a glaive, and makes his way up to the front of the group. As enemies approach within 10 ft, he gets an opportunity attack. Averlyth summons bees - all enemies that come near us will have disadvantage. Um climbs up the side of the arena.

2 guys bulldoze through the fart cloud, one stays there, retching. Someone throws a spear at Um (misses), a couple gets hits on the group.

Carlos makes a run for the Security tunnel and tries to Fear the guards. 4 of them appear afraid and go down the tunnel, 2 of them pull out janky hand crossbows and don't look skurred.

Nissa rides Kanye because he had a harness on (he was expecting it ), with such a flourish that people are stunned. She drives him around, he pokes at people with his pole arm. Averlyth keeps bees up, but maybe backs away from Kanye a bit as a precaution.

Um sneaks up on one of the security guards successfully, cracks one of the guards on the back of the head with an arrow, dropping him to his knees.

People aim for Um but miss, Kanye is hit by a long sword, Averlyth is hit by a dude, Nissa is hit a few. Guard pulls out a pistol and shoots Carlos.

Carlos chucks a lightning-style chromatic orb at the mofo; his armor is smoking, he staggers against the wall, but he hasn't gotten down yet. Carlos considers running down the hall, but the risk is too great.

Nissa criticizes someone's mom, Kanye tries to play good cop and bad cop at the same time by himself. Everyone is successfully weirded out, he's intimidated one of them into running away.

The sign has been circling us; in addition to the jeering and booing, there's some laughing faces. Averlyth heals everyone back up to max, and the faces are now mostly booing. Um takes another shot at the guard, but misses.

Averlyth gets hit by 2 guys, loses her concentration and the bees go away. Everyone gets hit a bunch, the announcer comes up, saying we haven't had a strong opening, asks who wants to place bets.

Carlos bets 1000 on the group because he has the band fund. The system disallows this action. Then he chugs a health potion and sends a goddamn fireball at the entire group of gladiators. One third of the dudes are dexterous enough to only take half damage. No one is dead, but some people are pretty unhappy, although the crowd is putting in fire emoji. Carlos tries to a cartwheel and falls on his face, but he sells the landing.

Nissa goes for the guards, hitting them but they're still standing. Kanye goes for a backflip - Nissa is all prepared to catch but then Kanye whiffs it and then twists around to make it look good maybe.

Averlyth creates 3 duplicates of herself after also chugging a health potion, but makes it harder for people to hit her. Um shoots a guard in the ass.

People finally hit Um with spears after he's been taking potshots all day. Two guys bring Averlyth down to 0 despite the clones, keep hacking away at her after. Kanye gets pounded, Nissa is damaged hard, Carlos is also unconscious now.

Miraculously, Carlos immediately wakes up at 1 hit point, starts apologizing to everyone that's ever wronged him, promises to be better, then shoots yet another fireball at the gladiators. They're fucked up, but still not dead yet.

Nissa kills the sad one with depression. Kanye gestures to Carlos that he would like to leave for unicorns and spa day. Carlos vaguely registers the signage while basically dead and gives him the OK. Averlyth remains slumped over.

Um tries to shoot a guard and misses; guard tries to shoot him and misses. Then more people shoot Um with a spear and now he is more spear than people. Everyone in the group is dead except for Kanye who's spitting blood at everyone at 1 health.

The biggest orc we've ever seen walks up and knocks Kanye out.

(fade to black)

Individually, we come back to awareness as we fall to the ground in a metal room, falling out of a container filled with pink goop. We're taken to a communal jail with everyone in the group. Everyone is recovering much faster than expected, though also naked.

Old mean looking elf, Security Chief Karen Krull approaches the cell; her guards throw our armor through the bars, she chastises them rudely for some random shit. Kanye shoves his scroll of pedigree into her face, she says she knows who he is. Carlos asks if we're free to go. Karen says no. Carlos asks if we can watch TV. Karen says no. Carlos asks if we can just like maybe not go back to the arena, Karen starts questioning his sanity, then entertains herself, mockingly asking if we really don't know what's going on. Carlos says he knows what's going on, but his friends don't.

Karen reveals that we are 3000 years far in the future, that we are the worst people in history and people hate us, but notes that we might not know yet what we did. Nissa sees no vents or holes in the cell, Um doesn't recognize the lock on the cell. Kanye roughly tries to familiarize himself with the security chief, Averlyth notices that the guards were a variety of species.

Um comments that we didn't see any magic, but it's probable there are still magic users in the area. Nissa sees graffiti under a bench - it's the same sign that Averlyth keeps drawing everywhere (she swears it isn't her handwriting).

DM: "I'm not going to make you roll for this, you would get it from contextual clues-"

Carlos: "It's just a penis"

The symbol was put into the wall by a former prisoner, seemingly carved by a weapon, but unmistakably the gauntlet of Bane. What's strange is that the icon is hidden, usually it's out in the open to inspire fear and all that. Averlyth investigates the sign, and then communicates to Bane under the bench. Um also goes under the bench, notices Averlyth's eyes have rolled back in her head, surprisingly doesn't kick him out. She has sent out a message to Bane; usually, it's a one-way message, where the god gives you a sense of approval or support as appropriate, but this time she immediately finds herself in a dark room, before Bane. Bane says something godly like:

Bane: "Averlyth? How the fuck are you here?"

As it turns out, Averlyth had become known for being his best supporter, and people still fear Bane because of her. She also supposedly died centuries ago. He promises her to support her if she needs his help as the connection starts fading away. She wakes up, stammers that she thinks she just met Bane, then suggests to Carlos that he should worship him.

Guards escort us back to the entrace of the arena. At first, no one has noticed us, and the mobs are going after each other. We investigate around the arena, see a cargo tunnel that we could clear out with an hour of concentrated effort. Carlos proposes to turn Kanye into gas and put him through a crack so he can start clearing it out from the other end, but before we can start, the giant female orc walks up to us, introduces herself as Tiffani and apologizes for the first impression.

Kanye greets her back in Orcish. Tiffani is delighted by the small person we have trained to speak Orcish. We pretend we weren't looking for an exit and she says she wants to introduce us to her "small friend". While walking with Tiffani, everyone avoids us, practically diving out of her way.

She takes us across the arena, where some people are guarding a small female human who is not particularly well armored. She is counting things or talking to herself? Then seems glad when Tiffani comes back, introduces us to Marge Zuckerberg. She asks if we know what's going on, Carlos says he does but his friends don't.

She says she needs us to destroy the portal; Averlyth asks what the portal is and then she's mad that Carlos said we already knew what was going on, proceeds to explain that the portal took us from time. She says that it will put us in a position to reset everything back to before the portal was accessed.

After frustrating Marge with "too many questions", we finally agree to help her blow up the portal. She details the security (the fact that there are no cameras in the cells) and the existence of a security hatch underneath the bench, Kanye asks if we've done this once before. She elaborates in real big words why it's not Groundhog day.

The group plots.