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Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry
Chapter Four: What is the True Story? | Sagas of Sundry: Dread
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Dan Casey
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That after we die, we will live on through those that knew us. We will live on through their memories of us. We will live on through the stories they tell of us. But what happens when the last person to know you, the last person to say your name aloud, the last person to tell your story, dies. Once they are gone, you are gone. You cease to exist. You are dust. Dust on the pages of a book that will never open again. Dust on top of a story that was once your story and now the pages are blank. Dust. Our chapter today is filled with loss and grief and the hope that sacrifice will Bring redemption to our campers. They must deal with it and at the same time handle a much bigger concern. Their own lives. But what did happen? What did really happen? What is the true story? And what do you do when the last person to know you, the last person to say your name aloud, the last person to tell your tale. Lies. These are the sagas of Sundry. I am Mr. Ren and Theus is Dread. As you hear the large booming sound of a huge male. He is on the other side of the wall. Go to the dial door. You go out towards the end of the hall. Okay, so we only have these two. We clicked that one, click that one, and then that, and then that one. The door opens and you find yourself in a musky room with several chairs, one of which is occupied. Agatha. Simon. He wants you in here, Simon. He tells me there are people here. And the door slams open as you see a giant 6 foot 8 man. I will go over and try my best to push any of the boxes and shit that are against the other door out of the way to make it free. You pull this door open and you watch as there is a sharp descending staircase leading down. And the last thing Tanner. That you see through the door is this man looks at you and sees this leather ball. And you hear a cry. I'm gonna take a look at the room. Rin. You start to realize this seems to actually be opening up into a natural cavern. And in that open space is Bones. Tayden. I know what you brought with you. Bring it to the entrance and see it turned on. Ah, Looks like you found another one of our hidden compartments. Bow and arrow. How timely. And with that, a hand reaches straight out from up the bone pile. Come on. Go. You run forward as fast as you possibly can and you can hear the screams of the undead. You twist and turn through the caverns and you can see light at the end of the tunnel. Sam. Well, welcome back everybody to Dread. I remember last when I saw you, you were sitting in the underground caverns of this old Victorian mansion and you were being chased by a horde of undead. Reyna, if I remember correctly, you had picked up a bow and arrow, courtesy of Tanner, who managed to pull a block from the tower. So for you, my dear, I have a bow and arrow that looks dangerous. Maybe you will find a use for it sometime soon in the adventure. Let me just. Yeah, that's. You can accurately see that it only comes with three arrows. And if you don't mind, I would like to ask you to tap into the depths of your Imagination to imagine that being a wooden recurve bow that is distinctly of native type. More importantly, still strong. Still strong. After hundreds of years, I know there's other forces at work here. That being said, as we're running through these tunnels, you saw a light at the end of the tunnel. And its blissful morning glow shows that daylight. It's been an entire night since you've been underneath this place, and morning is sitting in front of you just 25, 30ft away. There's a horde of undead behind you as well. So you run and you run and you run and you make it through all the caverns and you get closer and you get close to the light, only to realize that there is a single shaft of light piercing through a small hole only big enough to get your entire arm through. It's a dead end. There isn't much around, but the rubble seems to be loose enough that you could pull. How do we know this is morning and daylight? If we got to the house right when the sun was setting, where is the light coming from? Where's the hole in relation to the hole? Shoulder height. Which means that if this truly is dawn, then you would be facing the east. Okay, come on. If we do this all together, we can get through really fast and they're gonna eat us. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. I don't know if I trust the light source, but sure, wherever it goes, it's gotta be better than this. You're not wrong. Now, this is an interesting situation because originally I was going to have you pull to fend off the undead. But since you found the bow and arrow, let's do something a little more interesting. Let's try another skill challenge. Now, Reina, you can pass this bow off to someone else if you wish, but you are 2 for 0 at this stage as well. Up to you how confident you feel with a bow and arrow. Do you know how you used them before? Can we do one each? It would be very generous of me. So the answer is no. Okay, if I may, Caden's already broken a board. You've already lifted up buckets of water. Let the man shoot some bow and arrow down to that point, that's okay to find. You did pull the bow and arrow out of him. Yeah, that's true. All right, so I brought out some targets. Let me explain what we're going to do. Come on out. So, as you can see, we have our undead horde right here. Now, Tanner, at this circumstances, your team was going to have to make five pulls either all of you were going to have to pull one, or one person was going to have to do all five. You have an opportunity to be able to reduce those pulls. One by hitting the chest or two by hitting the head. If you can hit the head, this will reduce two pulls. This will reduce one. Which, if you're doing your math, if you can hit the head three times, I will even give you a white brick to put back in the tower. So no pressure, no pressure, no pressure. And if you happen to hit the torso three times, well, that's only two that you have to make between you and your friends to get you all out safely. Oh, my God. Okay. Want to still hold your jacket? Yeah. All right. Come on, Tanner, be the arrow. Are we good to go? Whenever you're ready. I promise not to even talk to you while you do it. We're already off to a great start. That's why I go into photography. All right, you hit the torso. Nice. That's one less pull. Nope, still better. All right, well, that's gonna mean four pulls from the tower, and that's my fault, so I'll take the pulls. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Absolutely not. You don't have to. Tanner, you can share them amongst your team. Share them? Share them? Yeah, you're sharing it. If I show the team, that gives a much higher chance of somebody else falling for my mistake. I'll take the pulse. All right. You took the bow from me. I just did. Fuck. Need I remind you, there is a horde of undead chasing you while you have to essentially move rubble out of the way in order to clear a path to victory? Somebody has to hold them at bay. And it either has to be all of you together or one man to stand alone amongst the horde of undead. Tanner, you said you had trouble connecting to us. Let us be here. Let us help you. If he wants to do one, he can do one. But then we're gonna jump him, push him out of the way. Okay? As these waves of waves of undead start to pull in on Tanner, he arms his bow and takes shot after shot with the arrows that he has. Some of them striking true and tail, taking them down, some bouncing off of their rickety bones to ricochet across the cavern as their snarling and their scratching and their wailing continue to echo across the cavern. But there's Tanner standing in the middle of the cavern. Especially not you. You know what you've done to her as he sits alone in the cave and one jumps on him, it pins him to the ground, and it looks into his eyes with their socketless face and it screams at him as its claws rake across his body and pulls him ever closer to its gaping, sharpened jaws. You see the skeletal and corpse forms of men and women all piling on top of him, body after body after body. Hannah, we all apologize to Set. I never apologize to you. I'm sorry for not reaching out. I had to figure myself out. That was my journey to take. I learned a lot from you guys a year ago. A lot. Tanner, this is your last poll. This is the fourth one. You do this and you fend off an entire horde of undead. It can be overwhelming to manage a business, especially when you're first starting out. Your to do list just keeps growing every day with new tasks and and that list can easily begin to overrun your life. 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You can Venmo this or their next show, you can Venmo that. Visit Venmo Me Debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International, Inc. The card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted accepted Venmo purchase restrictions apply. Look at the other side. Each one of the bodies Fuck. I love you Sat Tanner. You had a good run. Do you want to describe your own death or shall I? I'll give you the honor. As the skeletal forms pile on Tanner, you watch as body after body pushes him down and he lifts his bow up one last time to take a shot as it cleaves itself right through one of the undead, sending its body scraping it to the side of the cavern wall and raking down. But as his arm comes down, one more jumps onto his arm and pushes him to the floor. And then one more. Two. Three. Four, five. Land on him. And you hear screams as flesh is ripped out. And you watch as Tanner's eyes look back to the four of you. He nods as the corp like hands pull his head back into the fray. Run. And that is the final boulder that pushes out as all four of you are able to make a break into the dawn and fall into this place. And just as this last person comes through, you feel the rumbles of the cave start to give as more boulders, displaced from your frantic pull, cave in. And you hear the rocks and the screams of the undead as you make it for the treeline, just the four of you. Tanner, if you'd like, I would appreciate still having you here, but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave our little campfire tale. Of course. Thank you. And may the gods be with you. Now, I know this is a lot, but we're gonna have to rebuild the tower. So why don't we all get our hands together and pick up the pieces of what Tanner sacrificed so that the four of you may continue this journey. Would someone like to say something? Um. It was all my fault. Your fault? I gave him the vote. Um. I brought you guys here, and I thought he was weak. And then he tried to be a hero, and he didn't need to be a hero. And I should have taken his place, and I should have just. And now he's dead because of. It's not your fault. I just wanted to not be crazy. And now he's dead. They tore his head off. I don't want you guys to die. Satina, I used to think this was your fault, but it's not. And this was mine. It's not your fault. It was your fault. I always drag you around everywhere. You're like a little mini me. And even you are more brave than me. I can't even be brave. I don't even. I can't even, like, keep my head together. You knew what this was gonna be. I wanted to be the one who died. What? I know. What does that even mean? Why, that's all I had was the Goat Man. You had us, weirdo. Hello? No. My ritual didn't work. None of this is real. I don't have it. The tower's been rebuilt. We dedicate this one in the name of Tanner. And to keep our story on the heightened edge of what it is, we all will Make a pull. I will start. It's not your fault. I just thought by giving you guys fun adventures that you guys would grow some backbones and, you know, become, like, awesome. Well, last time was your fault. I mean, let's be fair. Well, why are you so upset that I wanted to be the one? He knew what he was getting into. And what the fuck makes you think there's gonna be one? I am sure all get a chance not to get out of this alive. That's not funny, Kaden. I'm not fucking joking. I just. You know, I haven't seen you guys in so long, and I haven't even really had a chance to tell you guys, like, anything. And, I mean, we're really lucky to be here, but at the same time, like, we could all not make it out at all. Did that not fucking occur to you? No, it didn't occur to me. People were telling me I was crazy, and so I kept trying to do LSD because, you know, trying to recreate it, and it didn't work. So I thought if we were all together, maybe we could do it again. And then it would make me not be crazy, because everyone thinks I'm crazy and. And until I can prove that I'm not crazy, my parents won't let me back in, and they won't even talk to me. All I can say is that at the very least, the bright, warm dawn is something that you are able to bask in. And though everything seems safe now, there is still this underlying feeling of. Of dread that is pushing down on all of you as if to say, this story is not over. As you go out through the caverns, you go not but 100ft or so before you see, stuck on a large piece of wood, a goat skull fixed into a giant stick spade into the ground. And as you look at this, you look to your left and to your right, and you can see dozens of them all lined up in a row, spanning almost as if they're making a wide arc in front of this cavern. Does anyone want to take it? As you lift the stick up and pull the skull from its casing, Darby. You feel something like a weight being lifted off of your shoulders all in a single moment. And something. Something that you didn't feel during the ritual. You don't know what, but something just happened. Guys. Guys, guys. It's real. I. All of this. The Goatman has been speaking to me. Yes, he has. I feel him now. He. He did something. He. He did something just before we got here. It's not scary. This is good. I have some control over this. Now you're scaring me. It's not like a lot of control, but it's in my realm now. Stop it. Just. After he died. It wasn't because he died. I don't know how this works, but this is better. No. There is no better. It's. It doesn't get better. We lost our friend, but we don't have to lose. All of us. I'm not a sicko. This is. I'm telling you that. Darby, you just said you wanted to be the one to die. Yeah, I did. I don't know why that's a problem, guys, but I'm not going to. Because I can feel this. And he's speaking to me, and there's not a problem. Not at work. Then how do you know he's speaking to you? Because he is. And I feel it. I don't know how else to tell you, but I've been trying to do this all year, and it comes in waves, and right now, there's no way. Why don't you call him right now and then make him go eat those zombies so we can go save Tanner? Well, it would require you. Guys, if you want me to call him, then we can. But it would require you. Fine, do it. Will it bring him back? Because that would be awesome. Tanner? No, I don't know. But we could get. I mean, I could get the goat. I could get the Goatman here. I'm convinced he doesn't want to help us. He might. I'm just saying, if we called him, it would probably be less detrimental. He's here. He is here. But if he were on our side, it might be better. What are you gonna do to get him on our side? Well, we have to write. Can you summon him? And then make him audio. There's a thing. Okay. The real answer is I don't know if this is going to work. Where did you even find this? It's a year's worth of research. She spent all year doing this in the library. Yeah, there's a lot of information out there to be had. And I found it. And. What the fuck is this? It could be. It could be A totem of power. I mean, the closest. What does that look like to you? Yeah, it looks like. Where we are, it looks like. Like that creepy, shady thing with the thing over its head, the black shroud over its head, making these little heads to block them in. So why don't we just knock them down? Is this why Tanner's dead? Is this why we're dealing with this shit? Since you seem to know everything? I don't know everything. Well, then why don't you make a decision, New leader Zach. You can't be mad at us for following you and be mad at us if we don't. I'll make a new decision. Fuck you. Um, well, I can't see how that helped. I feel better. You look better. There is a tension in the air. Maybe it's the four of you in conflict at the moment, or maybe it's something more, but there is something with you, whether it be a presence or whether it be something along the tree lines. But you are not alone. It could even be Tanner watching over you. At this point, you are all. Can't seem to resist looking around everywhere to find out what it is as you scan along the tree lines. Okay, so we can't let them eat his body. Fucking late. We have to go save. We are not saving chunks of Tanner. We can't let him turn into one of those weird things. Carry him in your backpack. It's not my fucking backpack. Into it. Somebody did a weird ritual, and now all my stuff is gone. I am willing to take the blame for that. I mean, there's not a whole lot I have left. This is getting worse and worse, and the one thing I do have is this belief in the Goat man and the fact that you guys won't acknowledge that it could be something. Well, then call him. Make him go and clear out that cave, okay? So we can go back in, grab Tanner, and get out of this stupid place. Okay, we need. Fine. Great. And that's what we'll do. Fine. Really gonna let this fucking happen? What the fuck do I need to do to get you here? What are you talking about? I don't know what you're talking about. I want to go back and get Tanner, and the Goat man is gonna come, and he's gonna break down the boulders, and we're gonna grab Tanner's body. The Great Pumpkin is not gonna do fucking. Sat. Sat. Sat. I'm really sorry for not. I'm really fucking sorry for not calling. Okay. Okay. I'm really fucking sorry. I didn't think that was gonna make anything better. No, I can't fucking make it. I'm sorry, all right? I just want to get him. I just. Mill. How is this ritual performed, Darby? If we want to do it, we just do it. Okay, well, we. You just have to write our name on a sheet of paper. Just. I'm doing it. I'm allowed to laugh because it sounds stupid already. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. 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Why are you mad? I was mad that you took us on that trip and Darby was losing her mind. What was? Angie? I'm mad like a normal person, not like a coward. Then all this would be real. It's really real now. This is real. You know, I may have apologized, but you. You are not the easiest person to fucking deal with. And yeah, ignoring you seemed like a really fucking good option. I had my own shit, okay? I'm your best friend. You're supposed to talk to me about these things. Don't have a best friend. I have whatever the fuck happened up here, I'm still me. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not me anymore. Whatever the fuck that shit was. Is it. We've always been able to talk things through and all you had to do was talk and you know, holding it in for a year isn't gonna help anything. There's nothing to fucking talk about. Oh, there's nothing. We spent years years as best friends and you just easily. It was so easy for you to walk away. It was not easy. This was. Who has had an easy. None of us can had an easy fucking year. I had an the easiest year because I found purpose in this. But it in its own right. It was hard, but it got to a point where it was a 6 instead of a 10. She ended up naked in the fucking streets. But I meant to do it by the way I would hope fucking so. Because to do it by chance would be fucking crazy. What were you doing? What were you doing? This whole time you act like, oh, I died. No, that was me. I'm the one that died. What were you doing? I. I didn't do shit. I got into art school. What, the one that's just outside of town? It's not a good school. I didn't even know you wanted to be an artist. I was curious if I could and I fucking can't. And I got kicked out out pretty fucking quick. You could have just asked me for some lessons. I taught you like I taught her there. The problem was, whatever the fuck happened back there, I don't know what the fuck happened. I can't do that. She can barely do that. And she's got her fucking shit together and is falling apart. What? What? I almost got expelled. I thought you're all Miss High Mighty, I'm an artist now, better than you, type of. I also thought that. What? My work is crap. I haven't drawn anything worth anything. And then one day in lab, a professor was coming up behind while we were working on something and he just took me by surprise. I spun around and I started hitting him with the easel. But I just kept. Fuck. You ate your teacher in the easel? I couldn't stop. Okay, Good for you. You're not a bad person. Person. This is not stuff to mess around with. No, but it is something to understand. Which is what I've been trying to do for this year. Then I think the best thing to do at this time is to close and finish this ritual. Everyone has written their names on the paper and it's time to see what is wrong with you. Don't you remember what happened in the cave last year? Yes. We're dead already. This is all just borrowed fucking time. You know that you came up here because of that. You know we're dead already. No, I. I came up here to understand it. Because I think there's something. I came maybe. No, no. This isn't going to kill us. This is going to help. So how do you finish it? We get behind the wall of goats. So the. The break between the two goat wards makes a perfect entrance as it is a clear break between the line which is equidistant from each other in every way. Except for the one that was removed right there. I fashion it back where it's supposed to go. And this will make for our entrance. Ideally there'd be a door, but there's not. So I lay our names down in front of the door, light the candle, set the candle on top of it. I knock 22 times, 22 times. The closest goat would you take the skull and knock on it? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22. Darby. 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