D&D is For Nerds - Jarren's Outpost #1 For Life, For Love, For Me
Episode Date: July 1, 2017In which our heroes need the gnomish weapon for different reasons. Check out our upcoming lives shows and purchase your tickets for our UK tour right here; http://www.sanspantsradio.com/live/ Want to... help support the show?Sanspants+: sanspantsplus.comPatreon: patreon.com/sanspantsradioPodkeep: sanspantsradio.podkeep.comUSB Tapes: audiobooksontape.comMerch: redbubble.com/people/sanspantsradio or teepublic.com/stores/sanspantsradio Want to get in contact with us?Email: sanspantsradio@gmail.com Twitter: twitter.com/sanspantsradio Website: sanspantsradio.comFacebook: facebook.com/SansPantsRadioReddit: reddit.com/r/sanspantsradio Or individually at;Adam: twitter.com/RetroArchetypeJackson: twitter.com/AlldogsaredeadHandsome Tom: twitter.com/AwkwardTreedZammit: twitter.com/GoddammitZammit Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Welcome to Chapter 1 of Jaren's Outpost Hustle, a D&Dist for Nerds adventure. Previously...
You get to Jaren's Outpost. It's part of a nation called Goldcrest, and Goldcrest just
went through a massive civil war in which... It was like the French Revolution. They were
all put to the sword.
Oh boy.
Oh no. Jesus.
And mercenary companies have basically taken over,
and there's this transitional period.
Hey, mercenaries, you're going to give control back to the people now, right?
That you've thrown over and you control everything?
And the mercenaries are like, eventually.
Oh, no.
Oh, boy.
It's actually caused some tensions.
Should we get involved or show off? All right, so Cassius, what's our next move? Oh, boy. It's actually caused some tension.
All right, so, Cassius, what's our next move?
What's your next move?
I mean... I don't know.
I've got to be honest with you.
I'm kind of curious as to who Daniel is.
I'm thinking of maybe investigating that some.
That's fair enough.
I don't really know where that will take me.
You're welcome to join me, Leo.
I was thinking of going back to Jaren's outpost
and looking into the Black Hand.
Mercenary group.
Yeah, the mercenary group being good shit.
So I was thinking of doing something up that neck of the woods.
Is this a goodbye?
Or is it a new beginning?
Good luck in finding out who Daniel is.
I'm out of here.
All right, Leo.
So long, Leo!
Oh!
I'm out of here.
All right, Leo.
So long, Leo!
It's been nearly, I would say, maybe five years to the day now that riots and a massive uprising swept the nation of Goldcrest.
A party of adventurers traveled to the capital of Goldcrest, Goldcrest, and killed the king of Goldcrest, King Goldcrest.
Well, that's just right.
A vain and selfish man, he ruled his kingdom with an iron fist, killing any who opposed him and imprisoning the rest,
either in actual jails or just within the country itself,
not allowing his people free travel. After the, shall we say, assassination of the king,
things did not immediately become better. In fact, they still are on their way to becoming better.
Mercenary companies, under the supervision of the adventurers began the slow
transition of goldcrest from a a dictatorship to a more diplomatic country but the adventurers as
adventurers are want to do left before the transition was complete. And mercenary companies, understanding that there was more money in overtaxing a population,
simply settled in at the position that the king once held.
We're going to center our adventure on the city of Jaren's Outpost,
specifically within the nation of Goldcrest.
During the riots and the violence of the uprising,
the gnomes in the warehouse section of the city busted out a new and terrifying weapon that they had been working on but never used.
None of our current party, who we will introduce in a moment, actually saw the weapon in action.
But you all heard that it killed 100 hundred people in less than five minutes.
After that initial mass riot, which did last nearly a week, no one saw the weapon again.
The gnomes dismantled it and packed it away, it having served its purpose of protecting them and their stock.
protecting them and their um stock when mercenaries began pulling out consolidating their findings after the adventurers stopped supervising them jaron's outpost was deemed not worth the time
and so it became a kind of lawless wasteland and in that chaos a band of orcs, an orcish tribe, landed at Jaron's outpost at the docks, seizing the docks,
and beginning an awful campaign against the rest of the city. One of the first things they did in
this campaign was steal the weapon that the gnomes had created. But because the gnomes had dismantled
the weapon, and orcs are not very smart,
they have yet to be able to harness the power of whatever this forceful device is.
Leo.
Leo Shadow.
Yes. You came at first to liberate Jaren's outpost from the Black Hand.
The mercenary group.
Yeah, they were stomping on the little guy, and I'm a little guy.
The mercenary group who were stomping on the little guy.
I'm a halfling.
It was implied.
I figured.
That was during the period where the adventuring party was still,
well, the adventurers were still supervising the mercenaries.
So Jan's Outpost had some, if poor, lore to it.
When you came to Jan's Outpost, however,
it quickly became apparent that while the Blackhands were not great,
some lore is better than no lore,
even if that lore is terrible.
And you decided that the lesser of two evils was still the better option.
So you kind of just assimilated into Jan's Outpost.
You found work in Little Tegelai,
Little Tegelai being the halfling quarter.
Tegelai is where they come from.
Hey!
So does it get like a Soho abbreviation?
Is it called like Lai Tai or something like that?
Oh, yes!
A hipster abbreviation.
That's what I'm calling it.
Yeah, I'm from Lai Tai.
All right, so Little Tegelai is run by the Halfling families.
The Halfling families might as well be Mafioso families.
So I fell in with the mob?
Yes.
Straight up?
You literally moved into Little Italy, or Little Sicily, and joined the Mafia.
You found that it was easier to assimilate with your own kind than with the rest of the city,
who tend to
rightly have prejudices
against halflings.
You're thieves.
By day.
Specifically, you work for
the Little Lo family.
Little Lo?
Yeah, Little Lo.
Run by Papa Little Lo.
Hang on, wait, wait, wait.
Papa Little Lo. Nah, that's wait, wait. Half a little love.
Nah, that's not any better.
I need like cotton balls to stuff in my mouth.
Pop a little love.
Pop a little love.
That's pretty good.
By day, you work in their restaurant as a waiter.
That is good.
By night, you go round the back.
They roll out a tarp.
You cast the grease spell upon the tarp.
They apply a gnomish salve that makes the grease spell last longer than a round, I think it lasts.
And then you squeeze it into bottles and sell it as little low premium olive oil.
Do we form a grease grift?
It's not really a grift.
It actually is like good oil.
All right.
It's just legitimate.
Legitimate industry.
That's legitimate business right there.
Although you don't pay...
It builds upon intimidation and extortion, I imagine.
Because you don't import or grow it properly,
so there's no one to collect taxes,
but you wouldn't be paying taxes anyway.
It's literally zero overhead.
This is like all profit.
Yeah.
Except for the Nomi sale,
but all profit.
And it gets a tarp.
All profit.
You started this simply because the Black Hand,
when they were around,
they were just imposing so many panel or tax rates on this sort of stuff.
So you avoided tax by avoiding a paper trail.
And instead just have a grease trail.
Yeah.
Like a snail.
So I can only cast a certain amount of magic in a day,
so I have to hold out.
Oh, yeah.
Or else Lilo's going to be mad at me.
You've got to do it and then have an hour nap or however long it takes to get back to it.
Papa Little Lo.
Little Lo?
Can I call him Lilo?
No.
You're not that friendly with him
But like Lilo from Lai Tai
You are not that friendly with him
His son calls him Papa Little Lo
His wife calls him Papa Little Lo
And his grandfather also calls him Papa Little Lo
What his wife calls him behind closed doors is none of your business
And if you even speculate Also calls him Papa Little. What his wife calls him behind closed doors is none of your business.
And if you even speculate, you're going to wake up with a fucking owlbear head next to you.
I like that especially because horses exist.
But an owlbear has had a better message.
It is more terrifying seeing that bear beak.
It's really large, so to take up most of the bed.
The fear there is that not only did they kill an owlbear,
a quite fearsome creature,
but they were able to sneak it into your bed without you noticing.
That'll take like five halflings. They actually just could have killed you.
It would have been so much easier.
But you wouldn't have been as scared.
Yeah, it's all about fear.
I think the message that sends is that they, like, want to send you a message, but they,
like, the point of the message is, we're not going to kill you, because it would have been
easier to kill you.
Just so you know that.
And if you had to kill him after, you'd be so mad.
I don't want to say necessarily reputation as a thief or anything like that,
but you were once a member of a very prestigious thieves guild known as the Shadow.
They currently want you dead, but the fact that you were once a member is kind of still a big deal.
And that's probably why you got the job with the Little Lo family.
They respected your past.
Now, you're in a little bit of a pickle right now.
Oh, geez.
Because a couple weeks ago.
Is it a Little O bit of a pickle?
It's quite a big little pickle, actually.
Papa Little O personally called you into his office,
and that's like a big deal.
You've spoken with Papa Little O maybe four times
in your
however many like
a year now
in Jaren's Outpost.
He called you in
to tell you
Leo
I need something from you.
Yes.
You were once a member
of the Shadow
the Assassins and Thieves Guild.
Yes.
In a way, yes.
Yes.
You have
experience. Do they know that i like got like ran away or
got kicked out it's probably a little bit of a secret that you're yes i was in but like maybe
they know you don't know 100 in a way then i keep it vague i keep it very vague that you were like
i said that you were in it all is kind of a big deal. Yes.
The orcs, they represent a chaos I cannot abide by in my town.
I've been thinking on this for quite some time now.
I want you to steal or destroy whatever it is they have, this gnomish weapon.
Okay, Little O.
I do not.
Little O.
Papa Little O.
Papa Little O.
I do not care how it gets.
I do not care how it gets done.
Only that it is done.
Yes, yes, Papa Little O.
I will do this thing.
Do I kiss his rings?
Is that the. He reaches out he reaches out with a ring of protection
they say this ring of protection offers me a plus five ac but kissing it technically offers you
thank you little little little out of my office i I scurry out. All right. So.
Like, for copyright reasons, we obviously can't play the Mafia soundtrack.
The Godfather soundtrack.
But, like, I'm imagining you walking out dressed as, like, a old-fashioned newsboy.
Because you're a butter halfling.
I imagine, like, still in waiter gear.
Still, like, an apron on,
but, like, you're an old-school, like, Italian waiter.
Anyway, you walk out the back of the restaurant,
maybe to have a smoke,
because, fuck, that was stressful. Calm those nerves of yours.
Yep, not fair.
Out of nowhere, you get grabbed by two thugs.
And thrown into the back of a carriage.
What kind of a day is this for you?
It's like, oh, no, jeez, oh, jeez.
Go for the, yeah, send me smokes.
By the time that you get your bearings, another halfling has a knife at your throat.
And you're looking Across the carriage
At Papa Quiet Knife
Hi Papa Quiet Knife
Do I know him?
Papa Quiet Knife is the patriarch of the Quiet Knife family
You don't know him very well
You know him more by name than anything else
Would I recognise that it is Papa Quiet Knife?
You don't really recognise his face
You recognise the methods
The Quiet Knife family
There are three big families
In Little Teagulai
But also Jan's Outpost
I like that you guys are either taking notes
Or just drawing doodles
Surprisingly
Jackson is also taking notes
I'm not just drawing sausage man
Or whatever
The big families are the Little Loaf family
Which is the smallest family, but the oldest family.
And it commands the most respect.
There's the Shorefoot family.
The Shorefoot family is the biggest one, but the youngest.
They don't have a lot of respect.
Okay.
It's all about respect.
And the Quiet Knife family is the strongest family, but the violentest family.
They're the ones most in trouble with the law, the most consistently, because they just, like, every punishment is a Colombian necktie.
Sorry, a, um, a orcish necktie.
Orcish necktie So you recognize this family
You recognize who you're sitting across from
And which family you're dealing with
Simply because of the methods that they grabbed you
Alright
And also one of the thugs who grabbed you
Was a half orc
And none of the other families employ orcs of any type
Hello quiet knife Quiet knives I understand that you None of the other families employ orcs of any type. Hello, Quiet Knife.
No, Quiet Knife.
Yep, Quiet Knife.
Good.
I understand that you once were part of the Shadow.
Yes, totally once was.
Yep, that was me.
As you, in your carriage, go around the block once,
Quiet Knife asks you to retrieve for him the gnomish weapon.
Oh, you're in quite a pickle, buddy.
And if you tell Papa Little, I will, well, let us say, acquaint you with the orcish way of dressing.
Gotcha.
You want it.
You want it not destroyed.
You want it. I want it for myself. Oh, all right. Gotcha. You want it not destroyed. You want it. I want it
for myself.
Oh, alright, yep.
They pull up at the restaurant
and shove you out of the carriage.
They do not slow
down. Sorry, I say they pull up.
They do not slow down.
Hopefully at the exact same spot so I can
scramble for my drop cigarette.
You grab your still lit cigarette and take a lot of puffs very quickly.
Ah, jeez.
Well, one wants it destroyed and one wants it...
There's an out.
There's an immediate out.
Greg Pierce.
Yeah, right? You're a lowlife handsome tom what's your character's name perry winkle o'rourke oh this is gonna be interesting
that's good perry winkle and greg all right all right perry winkle you were way back like
before the black hand came into the picture.
You were a member of the town guard.
Yeah.
You were quite a respected member of the town guard, to be honest.
People knew that if they needed a problem solved and they didn't care how it got solved, they could come to you.
You're a good cop, but you do bad things.
That's what I've got tatted on my back.
In August, obviously.
Out of the entire town guard, you were the only, you were one of like a handful that the Black Hand didn't try to like hire.
And that's simply because people, if they know two things about you, it's that first thing that you can get a problem solved.
But also that Jaren's outpost is where you have roots
yep as a half-orc it's hard for you you're always fighting uphill against the prejudices of the
people but in jaren's outpost people maybe they don't like love that you're a half-orc but you
command a bit of respect especially among the town militia, which was once the town guard, because they're
your mates. You saved
their lives, they saved your life. You're like
Titan, man. Yeah, we
play poker and stuff. Yeah.
Camaraderie. No one cheats.
No one
cheats. Your
half-orc also wife,
Gragia,
little G G has been
berating you for the
last fortnight.
Every night when you come
home from helping however you can
at the town militia, she
will not shut up. This
gnomish weapon, it is
going to destroy this town.
We can't have it out here.
It's just the worst.
The worst, the worst.
And maybe every night you're like,
well, what should I do about it?
Jesus Christ, woman!
I am but one half-orc man person.
And she tells you,
give it to the church.
They'll know what to do
with it.
You and your goddamn church.
We're there every Sunday.
This is where we
have our roots. We can't have
some gnomish superweapon
floating around here.
Yeah, my wife's
a little bit, like, junky.
We go bowling with them.
Is this about the Fergusons having a better house than us again?
I'm just saying.
They have a bigger flower bed.
If we had a bigger flower bed, we could grow our own crops.
And then maybe you wouldn't need to work such long hours because we'd have our own crops.
You could be home with your kids more often.
Such long hours because we'd have our own crops.
You could be home with your kids more often.
Speaking of your children, your twin girls, who you may name, but just not at the moment.
Your two little girls were being, you found out a couple days ago, were being bullied at school.
Oh, no.
And instead of... I bully so much. Instead of coming to you, they went to your mum, their nan, and asked her for help first.
A fairy.
For someone who was, like, the go-to guy, that was very emasculating.
Why would they go to their...
I don't know what, like, the nonner equivalent of an orc would be.
A knock-rock.
A knock-rock.
Why would they go to the knock knock instead of me?
You're knock knock and you're pack pack.
Come sit on the pack pack lap.
I like that you've got, because you're a half orc,
you've got nan and pop and you've got knock knock and grack.
And pock pock.
We're going to your grandparents.
Nan and pop orc.
Knock knock and pack pack.
Go on a knock knock. They went to knock knock instead of me
yeah they would have gone to you if you had a bigger flower bed that's the conversation that
i'm i think actually the little niggle that you got in your head is that if you take the if you
were able to get the the gnomish super weapon back to the gnomes the gnomish superweapon, back to the gnomes, the gnomish kingdom has a lot of power and a lot of sway,
but they never throw it around.
And if you could get the gnomes to help you fix up the problems around the town,
because the town has been, I'll explain this later,
divided into factions, like warring at each other constantly.
But if the gnomes helped out, the town militia could just like...
Go back to normal.
Everything could go back to normal.
You would actually be the hero of the town militia could just like go back to normal. Everything could go back to normal. You'd be the, you would
actually be the hero of the town.
And my kids would stop going to Knock Knock for advice.
But
if you got the gnomish
superweapon and didn't give it to
the town militia, your mates
if you gave it to the
church or if you gave it to
the gnomes, the town guard,
the town militia, your mates would be like,
what's that about, man?
You could have helped us out.
I thought we were close.
Your mates, your wife, or your pride?
My kids.
My kids.
That's what it's about.
You've got to do what's best for the family.
That's also my wife. La famille. I like what it's about. You've got to do what's best for the family. That's also my wife.
La famille.
I like that.
La familia.
Two of you are fighting for la familia.
I've got to go talk to my knock-knock.
Knock-knock.
Just imagine, like, Pack-Pack, like your grandpa, like, fishing somewhere,
and you're, like, both fishing together.
You're like, we've got to talk.
I need some advice, Pack Pack.
I believe that Knock Knock and Pack Pack would also only speak Orcish.
Oh, yeah.
They would float in and out of English.
I like the idea of them being mad that you haven't taught your daughters Orcish.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Because my wife doesn't want them to know it.
Like a common argument is like,
why don't you teach your children our language?
And you're like...
The language of their home country.
She just thinks that they'd fit in more at school
if they were...
Hang on, something just occurred to me.
So, if there are two...
Because you and your wife are both half-orcs,
so how do you have one set of human parents
and one set of orphan parents?
I would have...
You'd have one of each.
You would have a knock-knock and a papa.
Yeah, you'd have a knock-knock and a papa.
Knock-knock and puppy.
Yeah, knock-knock and puppy.
Fuck, that's good.
So, where the fuck was I?
La Familia.
Basically, I'm either going, I've got to get the thing back.
It's either for the town, the church, or my mates.
If you don't give it to the church, your wife, you will not hear the end of it.
If you don't give it to your mates, you will not hear the end of it.
If you don't give it to the gnomes, you might feel emasculated
for the rest of your life.
Your kids don't respect
you. Well, it's not that
they don't respect you. They just don't think that I can help
them fix their problems. Knock, knock,
though. He's got it
covered.
I just end up lying awake at night
crying about a flower bed that I don't have.
I like that you probably went round to your parents' place.
You're sitting there at this table with all these little doilies,
but they're kind of sewn.
Or doilies.
So maybe they're a little threadbare, and it's not a pattern,
but the war history of your mother's tribe.
That's so good.
Imagine her knitting that.
Sitting in a big duck tank.
You really captured Thug off the beheader.
She's like pouring you maybe
a cup of herbal tea or something like that.
She sits down and she's like, your kids came to me.
It's like her knitting
with battle axes.
Battle axe knitting thing.
In my head,
the way my family works, it's like, knock knock,
she's the boss.
And Poppy's in the background cooking.
Yeah.
And he's like a really thin, weedy guy.
I like to imagine he likes to grow tomatoes.
I like to imagine he grows tomatoes.
Yeah, I imagine him having a veggie patch out the back and he's quite timid and just like, no, that's your knock-off.
Or he's in a white singlet and shorts.
Always.
Always.
No matter what kind of climate it is.
Finally, Greg Pierce, the lowlife.
Yeah, that's me. You're a lowlife.
So, going back to the halfling
families just briefly, you're in a lot of debt.
A lot of debt to
a lot of bad people.
How deep am I with the halflings?
Well, it's not just the halflings.
It's the halflings.
Wow.
There's a list Right
You decided that probably the best way to solve some of your gambling debts
There is the daughter of a very wealthy merchant
She's kind of pretty as well
But you probably picked her because she was kind of pretty
Yeah, yeah, right, right
You decided that you're going to marry rich
Best move in the game And let him worry about your debts No, you're going to marry Rich Best move in the game
And let him worry about your death
No you're not, you marry Rich
You're in the family, family take care of you
That's what it's all about
Through a series of you bungling
But also lying pretty well
You were able to actually organise a date with her
You were like
Everything's coming up piss
Everything's coming up piss Sittingiss. Everything's coming up.
Sitting a little ways outside of Jaren's outpost,
just like in an,
under the shade of a nice tree.
You roll out a little mat or something like that.
Having a picnic,
turn it on the charm.
That's what it's all about.
Turn the charm up to 11 and you start chatting her up.
But the only goddamn fucking thing on her mind that she will talk about is a militant religious
group right yeah that are one of the factions that have taken up in the city known as the sabers
really interesting though yeah okay just the sabers as you learn and maybe you knew already
but as you learn certainly in the day, over the course of the day,
follow the teachings of a goddess known
as Lady Willow,
who in all things
exercises a certain level of
militancy
and rigorous, like,
adhering to rigorous religious
standings. So they're a
new kind of religion,
at least to Jaron's Outpost. It's kind of religion at least to jan's outpost it's an
old religion overall but it's it's only since this chaos has kind of erupted that the sabers have
been able to actually secure a part of the city for themselves and begin spreading the religion
and this religion is like with the all the crime and everything going to shit, people are like, yeah, a little bit of militant religion is what we need.
And this religion has grabbed a large part of the city.
Why?
Yeah, yeah.
Specifically this girl, Laura.
Is this the same religion that my wife keeps taking me to church to
or are we just a different church?
No, that's the old religion.
Gomes and Pena.
Yeah, cool, cool.
They don't even know the name of it because they don't care about it.
They are.
Go keep her happy.
In church, you've probably heard a couple sermons about Lady Willow and her violent ways.
Uncouth ways.
Yeah, yeah.
If they've been spoken of.
False idols, etc.
Not really false idols.
False idols, etc.
Yeah, I get it.
It's fine.
Yep.
The teachings of gnomes and Pena, who your wife and by extension a lot of the people you go bowling with follow, is very peaceful, like a spiritual religion.
Yeah.
Whereas.
A bit Buddhist.
Yes.
Whereas Lady Willow and the sabers by extension exercise more of a like, if you want God's will in the world, you've got to cut some heads off.
Right.
It's not like evil or anything like that.
It is still like, it does preach helping those.
Fairly dogmatic.
You can't make an omelette without bedding a few chickens.
There's not a lot of bending in the religion.
As it goes.
Yeah, but I'm with you.
I've heard that saying before, yes.
Yeah, that's a very interesting religion.
Nonetheless. Laura, yeah. Nonetheless, the date goes very well saying before, yes. Yeah, that's a very interesting religion. Nonetheless.
Laura, yeah.
Nonetheless, the date goes very well.
Oh, good.
That's a Greg Piss charm.
And you float the idea of getting married.
Maybe.
Or.
She seems.
After one date, you or.
Greg Piss works fast.
You are very charismatic.
Now, she does not say yes straight away.
My love.
But she floats the idea back that if you were to convert to Lady Willow, she would be more receptive.
Or like she certainly tells you with no uncertain terms that if you are not of Lady Willow, of that religion, she would never marry someone like you.
Yeah, right.
Understood course.
Course, darling.
With this information You went
To try and get
Converted because
As if you fucking
Hello
I love your religion
I'm down for Lady Willow
The paladins
Get them good
Whatever's happening
Yep
The paladins there
Saw through you
In a fucking instant
But
They saw a man
Who knows this town
A lot better than they do they have not been here
for very long and greg piss has a reputation for being a part of jaren's outpost and jaren's
outpost being a part of greg piss everyone everyone in town knows greg piss if not by
reputation then in the very intimate and carnal sense, knows Craig piss.
You either know me by reputation or biblically.
Those are the two ways.
There is no third.
So it's almost both?
Sometimes both.
Sometimes one leads to the other.
I want to think it's biblical leads to reputation rather than the other way around.
I'm sure it is you were brought before paladin commander evelyn plane uh she's the leader of the sabers at least in jaren's outpost a very strict and sometimes brutal woman she told you
that they kind of interrogated you about why you wanted to join.
Maybe they didn't necessarily get the full story, but they certainly got a part of it.
And they don't care about some merchant's daughter.
What they care about, they tell you.
The gnomish weapon.
Yeah, but get a feel in the heartbeat.
The weapon has too much power, you were told, to be allowed into the hands of anyone except the Sabres.
You guys will do it right, won't you?
If you can bring them the weapon, they will pretend that you are part of their religion,
so that you can marry the merchant's daughter, so you can pay off your gambling debts.
That's relatively few steps, to be honest.
It's much more straightforward than that.
Last thing I had to do.
Last old mess I was in.
That's pretty easy.
You left the district controlled by the Sabres on cloud nine.
Happy as a fucking clam.
That's like a week.
I can do that in a week.
End of the week, I'm good.
Half of it, really.
You were so pleased and excited with yourself
that you decided that for tonight, you're going to shack up with a lady of the week, I'm good. Half of it, really. You were so pleased and excited with yourself that you decided that tonight
you're going to shack up with a lady of the streets.
Oh, yeah.
A comely strumpet.
But you're not going to pay her a goddamn cent.
Greg Pierce don't pay for strange.
By hook or by crook,
you will not pay for strange.
Oh, God.
And you know what?
The first
streetwalker you propositioned was
very receptive. Excellent. You're having
an amazing day. Yeah. Except
after the first drink with her,
you fall unconscious.
Fuck.
And wake up somewhere dark and
unpleasant. Men and
women in awful
black robes with arcane symbols scrawled across them
are standing around you chained to a table.
Yeah.
All right.
Is this the deluxe package they were paid for?
A ritual is conducted.
Right.
Through the sounds of chanting, a goat is slaughtered,
and its blood is smeared upon you
As the goat's blood
Touches your skin
It burns
And tattoos your skin
They conclude the ceremony
Do you know Draconic, the language?
I don't
They conclude the ceremony in Draconic
And their final words In the ceremony in common are,
and bind his soul.
What?
Hey, why'd you just?
That was the only thing I heard.
That's the only thing I understood.
To what?
To what?
Please don't be the goat.
Please don't be the goat.
Please don't be the goat.
Maybe in your still kind of groggy mind,
it vaguely occurs to you that these people are probably the blood cult
that owns a section of the city.
Oh, no.
The mystic order of the holy blood.
These, shall we say, priests of a long-dead god
believe that they can bring their god
back to life by sacrificing
enough blood to him.
They sacrifice their own blood
and very often the blood of
others. Right, right. Like it was just a goat
got better
than me. Your soul has just been bound to something
that you don't know. Yeah, but I could have
had my blood taken.
And I need, frankly frankly this is a win one of the cultists holds up a profane looking holy symbol and when he holds it up you feel an icy coldness in your heart as if the warmth were leaving you oh and then you feel the warmth out of your body
and leave your body and bind itself to the holy symbol or the unholy symbol if you will yeah you
have the weirdest sensation of you can feel warmth that was once you, but is now the holism. This is an odd week.
Yep.
Right.
The cultist pulls back his hood.
And you recognize Ralph Moroney?
Ralph Moroney.
Ralph Moroney is a local lord.
Ralph!
You were part of the blood cult.
I am Father Moroni
I'm Father Ralph, thank you very much
That's Mr. Ralph, Father Moroni
Father Moroni of the blood cult, right
Twist
We will be making a sacrifice
And you will be helping us
Yeah, right
Alright, not of me, yeah?
Not if you can get us
the gnomish weapon
oh boy
would you believe I was gonna second person
today
it was told and I myself saw
with my own two eyes
that the gnomish weapon
bled the streets
the streets ran so red with
blood it was seen
deep within the sewers. He gestures
around you. And you notice that you are in
the sewers of Jaren's outpost.
Alright, okay.
We wish to bleed this town dry.
Would that be enough blood?
Perhaps.
Secure us
the gnomish weapon and you may have your soul back.
Yeah.
Well, I was going to
manage to choose from your dicky soul.
Antonio was back in the streets.
Oh, good. I think you're going to be like
into the sewers. Good luck, Greg Piss.
So, Greg Piss,
either pay your debts
and don't die
Or get your soul back
It's your choice
Bit of a conundrum
So many conundrums
That's a thinker
Right there
I nearly have two conundrums
And I have three
With one of my options
I get laid
With the other
Less so Can you enjoy being laid Without your soul? One of my options, I get laid. With the other, less so.
Can you enjoy being laid without your soul?
Well, that remains to be seen.
Your options don't rely on one of yours.
If you don't do it, getting dead.
Ours do.
Both of you get three.
It doesn't say my mates won't kill me if I don't give them the thing, though.
It's true.
It's true.
That's a good point.
It doesn't say my mates won't kill me if I don't give them the thing though It's true
That's a good point
Independently, all three of you decide that
Tonight is the night
After some planning
You're gonna steal away into the docks
This is it
The heavily orcish fortified docks
Now
Anyone who has been able to sneak their
And some people have tried sneak their way
Into the docks Has not been heard from since.
The orcs haven't made an example of them or anything like that.
They've just kind of disappeared.
Right.
I'm very un-orc-like to not make an example of someone sneaking where they shouldn't.
It is actually a bit, yeah.
You decide that...
If I was smarter, I'd suspect fair play, but I'm not.
There's the map of the city,
where, divided off into the sections
that each faction owns.
Okay. Man, the blood cults go
quite a... like a lot of...
They own a lot of the upper
or the fancy section of the city
because the entire...
What do you call them? The lords and ladies?
Yeah, the gentry. The gentry lords and ladies? The gentry.
The gentry.
Nearly the entire tree of the gentry of Jaren's outpost were members of this blood cult.
Back in the days when King Goldcrest was around, the blood cult was kind of encouraged.
Of course they were. That's rad.
Golly in the blood cult.
It was seen as a hip and cool thing to do.
So the gentry did it
I love
I love because gnomes
Is a religion in your world
But it's N-O-M-E-S
I know what you're about to point out
But then
It's right next to gnomes
The people who own
One area
So I'm sure if you were
Giving directions
You'd be like
Go to the place
You know where the gnomes is
Which gnomes
The people
The people who worship
The god or the
Little lads
The little lads
Yep so Also tigalai Not spelled how I imagined But I like the way it's spelled The people. The people of worship. The god of the... Little lads. The little lads. Yep, so...
Also, Tigalai, not spelled how I imagined, but I like the way it's spelled.
The, yeah, the halfling sort of section is, covers pretty much just little Tigalai.
The gnomes, gnomes and penia, which is kind of up the top, that's the slums and the poor
district, opiate of the masses joke, if you will.
I will.
district, opiate of the masses joke,
if you will. I will.
The Sabres centre around a small
fort, Fort White, which was
kind of like a secondary
sort of combat location
which was once controlled by the Black
Hand, but when they moved out, the Sabres
kind of moved into that, and they used that as that base
of operations.
The town militia occupy
the most populous part of the town,
so where you find the most people.
That is not the slums.
So like the middle class area, if you will.
The blood cult own, obviously, the upper part,
the part where all the fancy people live.
The gnomes have the warehouse area,
and the orcs control the docks.
Cool.
Finally.
I was about to say, what's that bit in the corner?
There's one last section.
Rhodes Keep is the major castle of Jaren's Outpost where Lord or Mage Damian Eaton lived.
Lives, I should say.
When King Goldcrest was in charge, Damian Eaton was the local regent. And he ruled Jaron's outpost
with the same iron-handed style
that King Goldcrest ruled the nation.
He was a very unpleasant
and unpopular man. When the
uprising happened, him
and his loyalists retreated
back to the castle keep, and they've been
there ever since, just quietly watching
the rest of the town.
Immediately distrust them.
Well, rightly so. pretty much distrust everyone although he was once your employer so i immediately distrust him
he didn't give me good dental oh man he did not get any dental they're a mess exactly so uh you'll
notice there's a wall blocking off the dock area.
You jump that wall in the night.
All three of you independently.
The orcs have no use for a lot of the supplies,
the shipments that were coming in and out through the docks.
So things like maybe like designer goods, if you will,
like nice clothes from the elven places, nice construction work from the dwarves, stuff like that.
That's all been shifted to one side because orcs just fucking don't like dwarves and elves.
And they refuse to use any of their stuff.
The boxes of this stuff are packed high.
And moving in between these boxes to get closer and closer to the Orcish camp, the large tribal looking, well, sort of string of tents and such in the docks, all three of you bump into each other.
First, maybe you wish to yell, say something like, what are you doing here?
But then an Orcish patrol passes very close and you instead just decide to keep quiet.
What words do our heroes have for each other?
Find out next time on Jaren's Outpost Hustle, a D&D's for nerds adventure.
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