Tricadia doesn’t give refunds. Tim flatlines into a spell-sick trance, the party’s gadgets go quiet, and suddenly it’s just muscle, prayers, and nerve in a cave built to punish mistakes. They stabilize who they can, eat the guilt of who they can’t, then turn the whole operation into a controlled hit: bait the tunnels, learn how the oozes “think,” and fight them on their own terrible terms. Down below, every door is a coin flip between freedom and a hidden rune, so the crew clears rooms, disarms traps, and hauls eight unconscious prisoners up the ladder in brutal relays. By the time the crate slams into place and the tide starts whispering about a rowboat, they’ve bought a breath… not an ending. The deeper hatch is still there, the slavers still exist, and Tricadia is about to find out they came to finish the job.

Music: Victorian Mystery by Scrybe Quill https://www.scrybequill.com/Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 Licensehttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The stream finally behaved, but I still managed to hand myself a new headache: three behind-the-scenes mechanics I now have to build clean inside Foundry so they don’t slow the table down when they hit play. In the recap, Nefir gets tossed back into the room like the universe is done borrowing him, Grashka drops a quiet truth that makes everything feel sideways, and the party keeps moving through Karra’s stronghold while very intentionally not opening the door that leads to a lich. A blood-fed amphora spits out angry spirits, the halls throw grief and claws in tight spaces, and by the end they’ve got a third key in hand and the uncomfortable feeling that the stronghold is done playing nice. Then in the DM Deep Dive, we get real about scheduling: what you can commit to, how to talk about it like an adult, and why flaking kills more campaigns than any monster ever will.

The Crown’s “anti-pirate” assignment turns into a wet, ugly grind the second boots hit Tricadia. A storm-soaked wreck offers nothing but rot, so the party pushes into the caves, lays a mean little welcome mat (shadows, ice, and Tim’s beloved caltrops), and forces the pirates to fight on terrible footing. Steel, spirits, and a very personal slime problem turn the choke point into a blender, and the crew claws their way through… only to find the real gut-punch waiting deeper: cages. One bad hit, one trapped lock, and the rescue mission suddenly has consequences you can’t undo. Now they’ve got survivors in hand, blood on the floor, and tunnels still breathing ahead.

Music: Cursed Island by Ivan Duch https://ivanduch.com/Licensed under Ivan Duch's Music License Agreementhttps://ivanduch.com/licensing/

Fresh off the Platinum Keep’s verdict, the party doesn’t get a victory lap, they get a sentence. Annabelle points them south toward the Tricadia Islands to gut a pirate problem, and she staples a very official, very earnest paladin to their hip: Nefir Eques. A new ship, a new captain, and a new routine follows, right up until the ocean reminds everyone it has its own predators. Something with eyestalks drags along the hull, beams carve panic into the water, and the crew finds out fast that “probation” still bleeds. By the time the S.S. Sadness finally drops them on a jungle beach beside wreckage, they’re exhausted, underfed, and very aware that the real punishment is waiting inland.

Music: Spirit's Refuge by Ivan Duch https://ivanduch.com/Licensed under Ivan Duch's Music License Agreementhttps://ivanduch.com/licensing/

The mountain finally exhales. The Skygate is stable, the screaming wind is gone, and the elementals that once begged for relief now swirl around Cliff like kids around a campfire, calling him Earth Brother. The party heads back to the Metallic Capital thinking they’re carrying a win… but the Platinum Keep doesn’t reward “mostly heroic.” It audits everything.What follows is a three-day descent into confiscations, iron doors, and a courtroom that feels colder than the summit ever did. Witnesses step forward, debts get weighed, and the party learns the hard way that saving a dragon does not erase the bodies left behind in Leake. When the verdict lands, it doesn’t fall evenly. One of them gets taken. The rest get a leash. And the Keep assigns them a new shadow: Nefir, a paladin whose job is to make sure they don’t “fix” the realm again.

Music: Underdark - The Web's Edge Ambience by Supernova Collective https://supernovacollective.bandcamp.comLicensed under Scrybe Quill Context Licensehttps://www.scrybequill.com/license

A storm that won’t break. A mountain trail where even the wildlife bails early. And at the top, Mecoo’s sky-gate starts acting like it’s about to rip itself inside out. The party pushes through warped winds and half-spoken warnings, only to find a “secured” scene that feels anything but secure… and then the ambush hits. Poison. Masks. Someone pulling strings from far away. By the time the clouds finally start to thin, they’re left with one living problem they can’t ignore and one name they definitely won’t forget.

Music: Eberron - Mount Ironrot Background by Supernova Collective https://supernovacollective.bandcamp.com

Licensed under Scrybe Quill Context License

https://www.scrybequill.com/license

Streamlabs decided to take a hard nap mid-session. Not the “everything looks fine on my end while you’re all staring at a black screen” problem, thank God. This one was a full lockup. Preview frozen, controls dead, the whole app basically turned into a screenshot. So I did the only thing you can do: killed it, restarted the stream, and jumped right back into the scene as fast as possible.

In Karra’s stronghold, the Shadowfell didn’t ease us in, it just took something. The Jester showed up, called it a new board, and Nefir was suddenly gone. The party salvaged what they could (including a Scroll of Gentle Repose), said a surprisingly real goodbye to Ed-D, and followed Grashka’s “pull” straight into a wraith ambush that got messy fast… especially when Cliff’s holy power hit Grashka like it hit the dead. Later, they found villagers they’d saved before, picked up another key from Brie, and now it’s two keys in hand, three to go.

DM Deep Dive is backstories: why I cap them, why “too short” is still a problem, and what happens when you give me nothing to pull on. Spoiler: I’ll make the strings myself.

An undead village that asks to be raised, a necromancer with rules, and a paladin order ready to burn it all down. The party has to choose between kingdom law and Karra’s living–dead families, knowing whatever killed an Emerald Dragon without leaving a mark is still out there. They bend the truth, break a few knights, and walk away with ash on their boots and the Sky Shrine on their to-do list. How long can they juggle “necessary lies” before Bahamut’s court puts the pieces together?

Music: Barovia - Death House Background by Supernova Collective https://supernovacollective.bandcamp.com

Licensed under Scrybe Quill Context License

https://www.scrybequill.com/license