The Ballad of Edgardo (Curmudgeons and Dragons Replay)

0:20 Hello adventurers. The podcast role players and game masters to help level up your game. I am your dungeon master, Jason Portiso, and today we are going to continue with some greatest hits replays from our previous show Curmudgeons and Dragons. This episode was a ton of fun to record. The host roster at the time was myself Jim Crocker, who you all know, one of my longtime friends, Josie Diz and her DM Greg Genovas. I had just moved into my new home and we hadn't built my home studio yet and Josie just happened to be in town in between semesters from her school in England, so we had all met at my new place to record around my dining room table, like podcast thing was meant to be. It was awesome. I believe this was the last in a series of several episodes that we recorded in that session. So this replay episode is the first time we tried it in RPG.

1:11 Classic story something we did even on this show with the Absurd Story which if you hadn't heard that one is a muscless and it was hysterical. So this is a story that made its way around four Chan and dig and read it and all the usual spots, and every time it comes up, I have to reread it. It's written in that strange four Chan green tech style. But despite that, it's a well told story of a game gone wrong where the underdogs uproot the corrupt system by turning its own tricks against it. In the end, absolute all timer classic. But before we get into that, I just want to throw the disclaimer out there that we like to keep Hello Adventurers as a clean show, but Curmudgeons and Dragons was not. So this episode was marked explicit in your podcast player just for some language. So if you like to listen with your kids, maybe check this one out on your on first. But otherwise, please enjoy this replay of our retelling of the Ballad of Edgardodor. Sometimes talking with friends feels like role playing, sometimes it feels like combat. Join us at the round table and roll initiative.

2:19 This is Curmudgeons and Dragons. Hello Adventurers. So first of all, I'm Jason Portizo. I'm here today with Josie Diaz. With Josie Diaz. Oh that's my cue. Hello, there we go. Great you Novus, I did not miss my queue. Well, Pina Rose on your nose, you stupid bitch. I will Jim is missing his cue because he's still at Origins. He's been there for weeks. I know. Josie Gregor is still in my house. We're recording my my dining room table so until I can build my studio. So there were five Wednesdays this month weird, and so my rotation was getting thrown off. So I was trying to think of what to do for the fifth week special. And we're going to try. We're going to see how this works, and if you guys like it, please send us an email or just comment on something. Let us know somehow whether you like this idea or not. But so we've done horror stories, We've done wholesome stories. I'm just going to do a story. This is really neither good nor bad. This is just like a classic RPG story. It's been all over the internet for years. I have not only read this story before, but I've watched videos of other people reading this story before, just because I love this story so much. And when I found out that greg and Josie didn't know this story, I was so happy to be able to tell them. So we're just going to read through the Ballad of Edgardo, and it sort of reads like the epic of Gilbert and some of you might know

3:51 what I'm even talking about and know how crazy this story is. It's great. So the format for today is I'm just going to read the story as it is, pretty verbatim, and anytime you guys have some sort of you know, anything you want to add to the story, anything you want to any comments to you, or if you want to just discuss part of it, We're just gonna just react as we go. Okay, so I can do that. Don't feel like you need to wait for your turn. Don't do we ever, Josie, try to try to get I will attempt. I will make the attempt. Yeah, I will try to be annoying. Okay, mine? So uh. The other disclaimer is that this is written in four chan green text style, so it's a little funny to read.

4:32 Uh, it's gonna sound a little weird. But this is a long one, so I'm going to just dive right into this. So you guys ready for this. This is the Ballad of Edgardo. Get a hankering from some RP or roleplay cruise a couple forums. Something catches my eye. Some kind of weird combination of stuff from Dragon Ball, z Gurin Logan, Avatar, Last Airbender, and a few other themes from different shows basically and a movie game. Honestly, kind of a cool setting after reading it. Superpower does wander around doing their own thing, having adventures and trying to stop evil shadows from consuming the world. Looks cool, sign up and start making a character. Characters had attributes, strength, speed, the usual shit traits, and powers chosen from a big list, and Spirit, which we use for doing cool shit, had a certain number of points to spend on attributes max strength and put someone to speed endurance. And a couple in Charm wanted to try a brawler type of guy. I'll get to why that idea is a bad one later. I mean, if it's anime logic, you want to go brawler, That's what I thought. Yeah, the hulking Bruiser is always just like a cool like There always the fun characters for sure in those kind of games too. I think it's just fun to be like ZANGI even just walk around bunch of people. M I do it all the time. Look at Spirit rules before picking powers, because I want to do as much cool shit as possible as you do. Spend spirit to activate powers. Different powers modified how spirit worked and gave it an element alignment which modified damage and other crap.

6:02 Basically, let you spend one point of spirit to give five points a fire damage. Neat so pretty close to uh weigh the elements monk from what I'm from what I'm hearing, and I'm trying to equivocate to a five E. I don't know if it's directly like that, because like spending one okay spirit, it's kind of like key I guess, yeah. Yeah. There was also a raw Spirit, which had no modifier, but also no elemental alignment and couldn't be resisted. Less bang for your buck, but could be useful. Raw Spirit could also be used to raise the stat temporarily, but the higher the stat, the more spirit you had to spend. Spirit had a cap depending on your attributes. At lower levels, it was pretty low, like ten or twenty. If you got lucky with my stat layout, I had five awesome look through the powers list to see if I can unscrew my character. Browse through the list. Pretty basic stuff throw fire, control, shadows, frost breath whatever. Also mundane powers like sword fighting and free running. Choose unarmed combat right the bat, because I want to punch people.

7:00 Still a bad idea. Unarmed combat is so underutilized in RPG's in general. Yeah, yeah, there is a very cool like third party five D class made by like one of the I can't remember off the top of my head who has and I don't have it in front of me. Some guy or group that makes pretty good third party content, and they kind of modified the Monk class into the Pugilist. Oh yeah, and it's I want to play this so bad it looks awesome. My pro wrestler character that I made by by making a barge burying is basically already in the Pugilist doing all the things that I wanted him to do without having a multi class in split. But that's another one for another time. Keep looking see something interesting tucked the way in the list overflowing spirit pretty expensive points wise for a simple power, but my eyes lit up at what it did. Removes the spirit cap plus some other crap which I glanced over at the time, but more on that in a bit. It's like, oh fuck, now, that's pretty abusable.

7:57 Figure Everyone takes it, so I take it too. Take battle, cry for a spirit buff and to blow the last the last of my power points. Character pretty much done. Name him Edgardo because it sounded cool at the time, still does. Ready to go at Gardo. The brawler sets ount on his quest to do whatever that sounds like a Texan luchador name. Yeah, it's a good one. I think it's fun. It's a little little Edgar, little Eduardo Edgardo, and you have to say that just fucking ridiculous enough to work. I will from now I will only be saying it in a in a Matador accent. Yes, Mayamo Edgardo starting the central town where everyone else hangs out, introduce myself. Describe him as hot blooded, hot tempered, courageous and always itching for adventure. Honestly, pretty flat character.

8:50 But whatever I thought, I thought he was okay. Promptly get laughed at for making such a naive and low brow character. Apparently everyone has made brute anti heroes who sit in dark corners and don't really do much of anything. I swear that Tavern had to be some kind of eighth dimensional shape because everyone was in their own fucking corner away from everyone else. The side note. My inspiration for reading the story to you guys was a note that Jim had in Our Tavern's episode about the Aragorn scene and like everybody wants to be the brooding ranger, like tucked away in a corner, and I'm like, oh yeah, there's like one hundred corners in the fucking bar. And I remember this story because of that line. So Tavern had to be some kind of eighth dimensional shape where everyone was in their own fucking corner. But the last straw came from some asshole drinking his wine at the bar. At Gardo is such a stupid name anyway, who those are fighting work? Noo.

9:41 See this is why you don't make fun of characters' names. Yeah, all right, we have two stories about that. Now the story continues, and I quote motherfuck exactly. Edgard, though, did not walk in here to be mocked by a bunch of trench coat wearing pricks that are trying to be edgier than a goddamn razor blade factory, take a swing and quickly discover that I'm well and truly but fucked. Apparently, unarmed combat was hosed from the start, as fifts don't do shit against even the lightest armor and don't get damage multipliers. Fantastic. I blow a spirit point just to get past his armor do single digit damage. Fucker laughs and stands up. Care to try again, you pathetic wench? Yes, yes I would, Sorry you pathetic wretch. Sorry not you, Josie. Oh well, then my response means nothing. I yield my time, sir, thank you, use battle cry.

10:33 Can't think of anything, so I just go with BUNSI why not incredible and use the rest of my spirit points nothing. He dodges, draws his sword and gives an eye rolling disappear before he blasts me out of the tavern with sword Lightning. Whatever the fuck He spends one spirit for that and I nearly get one shot, even with a good amount of endurance. Fucking what. So already this game is like way unbalanced. Yeah, it's already a shit show. So only Eldridge Knights, that's it. Yep, that's all. That's all, and rogues with also Eldridge powers. Yeah. So while I'm bleeding out on the side of the road, I take the time to browse some of the characters. First up is sword Lightning, asshole, basically the same level he's got swords end lightning in his asshole. No, you pick one or the other. You don't basically the same level as me, but better in every way. Powers are better, higher spirit, good stats.

11:33 More my fault, really, because I fucked the character creation brows more characters. Notice something no one has, overflowing spirit. No one ask why. Turns out that if you make a decent character, you have more than enough spirit to do whatever the fuck you want. Even the highest level characters only have about one hundred cap and it's rare to get even halfway down in a normal fight. And then there was the part that I skipped over overflowing spirit prevented you from taking elemental powers. You're basically stuck using your raw spirit, which was shit. Elemental spirit had damage modifiers so high that even if you resisted it, you still took a good amount of damage. Nido Burrito Edgardough was basically useless against everything. Since I was screwed, I pm the mod to see if I can make a new character that wasn't crippled beyond belief.

12:24 Lol, deal with it. You made it, you play it. That's so kind of shitty, but you know you made your bed, did you pay for this game, like, just like, just start a new just be like. Oh no, I've tripped over a rock and I just somehow managed to land on a stick that one through my eye and through my brain and now I'm dead. Looks like I've got a new character. I just got mad with Jim's out here, so I'll say a form rocks fell. I died. Yeah, yep, I got. I just got mad at Injustice again for how they treated Dick Grayson. So recap everyone's pretentious fuckquad, the mods don't give a shit, and Edgard, though, is beyond worthless. Great start pick myself out of the dirt and limp away to get myself healed. Nope, I was broke, so I couldn't get shit.

13:07 I had to sit my hands down and wait to heal naturally, which would take days. Fuck that, I'm already tired of the shit, So I attempt to steal a potion. No, I was gonna say, I can already feel that going wrong. Yeah, enter Militant zero spelled x E R zero. Oh no, yes, that was his name. He plays as like cringe too. That's in the story. He played a little too much. Kingdom Hearts or Mega man or a Meghan omnipotent Karen nipotent character number forty seven eighty two could do anything he wanted because he'd been with the role play the longest. I also suspect that he's sucked the headman stick, but whatever, that has nothing to do with anything. Just listen, Hey, what are you doing? Your off times up to you, dick Sucking privileges are a real thing with bad GLMs. Right teleport to me instantly. I can't do shit because I'm basically dead on my feet. Lift me into the air with magic psychic bullshit, so I can't even run. He starts going on a long speech about crime and how evil doers should be punished and how he's the best and blah blah blah. Then he gives me an ultimatum. Beg me for mercy, and I might just let you stay in this town.

14:20 Time to brat, otherwise I'll throw you to the shadows. Time to brat. Fuck no Edgard, though it does not beg struggle, swear, spit, and basically do everything I can to do anything to get out of this. Nope, I get thrown through the roof of the building. I get thrown Nope. I get thrown through the roof of the building I was in and soar all the way out into the wilderness. Well, I'm dead. Fortunately, newbies get one free revive I cash mine in. This guy is determined. I appreciate his determination. It's incredible. At a certain point, you just gotta be O this game's socks's let's see what happens. Yeah. Also, must be nice to have the much time on your hands and play side games. I wish I had that much time. Like you know, this is the high schooler by how much free time he has zero gets super fucking butt mad about it, says I'm dead for good because he says so, and when call him out of this bullshit, immediately get shot down by everyone in the community. Suddenly I'm the bad guy for trying to steal and picking a fight. Yeah, okay, mods, calm everyone down. Say I'm alive with one health in the wilderness. Last bit of charity I'm getting.

15:26 I won't even survive the night. But then I met a guy called Squid. We love guys folk Squid. I've never met a bad person named squid now. Also, his name is all capitals, so it's a it's a proper noun. So it's like a trip called quest. You say the whole thing right. Beast Folk were a thing so people could have cat girls and wolfmen and shit like that. Fuck Yeah, a guy called Squid was well part squid, literally just a big muscly dude with a squid for a head. And yes, his full name was a guy called squid, and he insisted that everyone called him that. Told you it's like fishy Steve, pretty cool dude, ran into the same troubles I did. Was a punchy guy like myself, but he punched people with fire, helped me out, shared a potion, and was generally a bro. We both decided to stick together and train out here because we both needed to get a lot stronger before we headed back into the town. It wasn't going to be nearly that easy.

16:18 Got some nighttime me and Squid. Sorry, this is the opemide, the mistake not made. Being a guy called Squid set up camp in a cap so suddenly shadows because mod bullshit and Zero whined enough that I was still alive. I was still pretty fucked up, but I could hold my own and Squid was in perfect shape. Still, we barely survived mainly because Squid's fire damage was beastly. We both agreed that we wouldn't survive another fight like that, so we high tailed it out of there and back to the town. Yeah, no, invisible force field prevented us from getting back in. I wasn't surprised. There's a lot of like six year old energy in this game. Yeah, this is like, there's a force field. Me my name is Zero. Looked at the map, found the nearby town, the hole up. It take a couple of days to get there, though, and we were both out of supplies. Neither of us saw any other way, so we got to walking ed guarded though, and a guy called Squid.

17:10 Just the two guys on the road to adventure or the road to not dying horribly and somehow getting petty revenge. But whatever, petty revenge is a great plot hook. Yeah, I'm fine with it, or revenge should be petty. Normally, when people traveled, there were random events that can either be good or bad for you. It was up to how much the mods liked you. Really, the mods didn't like Squid or Edgardo. If we got something good, they'd find some way to take it from us. We saved the lady from bandits on the first day, and by that I mean we kicked the bandits in the balls, grabbed the lady, and ran like, hell, amazing fun. You saved the lady. Did you accomplish the task? Then it did great. That night, she prisoned Shank, Squid took the little shit we had gathered and bailed. When I tried the chaser, she poofed gone, Nido burrito holes. These mods sound like a bunch of dicks, right, Yeah, I'm starting to think the mods are the bad guys in the story. It sucks when you have a very very cool setting and everyone in it it's just a piece of shit. Yep. I really don't know why we kept going after that. It was obvious we were unwonted, so we really should have just quit. I think we were both waiting on the other to give them first. I didn't want to admit defeat, and I knew Squid didn't want to either. We just had the press on no matter what. Even when we met sword fighting guy again, it had been a few days on the road and we kept getting shit on wolves Rain another shadow attack. Still don't know how we lived, but we scrapped by either by running the FuG away or through sheer luck in winning a fight.

18:45 One more day of traveling and we'd be at the village. We were so close that we could taste it. But then the dick from the tavern showed up blocking the road. Never mind how he got ahead of us, but he was, and we had to take it. I mean, horses exist. No, it reminds me of the Emperor's new groove. By able accounts, by peer logic, it doesn't make any sense. Shout out to my boy Kronk. Well, well if it isn't the wretch from the tavern, and he picked himself up aside dish too. No, that just feels gross. I don't like it. Squid doesn't to take a hike and let us through. But this is a toll road. You'll have to pay me to pass. Let's say one thousand gold. Oh, I've played this in Skyrim. I do. This is fuck it? What tellbody's full of shit and nobody has that much money. It's like, oh, what a shame.

19:37 Then you'll have to pay with your lives. He pulls a sword in blast Squid, who somehow powers throw it. This gives me a chance to get up close and well, we've established I can't do funk all against this guys. I'm banged up pretty good at fist. Don't do shit. Only thing I have left is spirit, a metric as ton of spirit. See, as we were training, I was hoarding points, well, not intentionally. I gain some every day like everyone else, And every time Squid and I killed something, we got a little bit more. Squid was spending his spirit left and right. I wasn't. And since I had overflowing spirit, I had a lot more points than I had any right to at my level. Even if raw spirit was crap, A lot of crap could still wreck someone's deck edgard though, had a chance, a slim chance, a slim chance, but it was better than nothing. Bonzai Bat'll cry and use all of that spirit. Crowdchurn uppercut sword guy doesn't give a shit, actually laughs in my face and doesn't even make an attempt to dodge. You're kidding, right, We've been through this. You can't hurt me. I'm actually like, that's how he spelled, is u f u F I think I'm doing a pretty good job reading his laugh. Okay, you really are You're the only one laughing asshole. My fist connects with his chin, and so does all of that raw spirit didn't do nearly as much dame as as an elemental attack would, but it was still enough to knock him on his ass, which gave Squid the perfect set up. He jumped on sword Guy and blew all his spirit too. Where once there had been a face, there was now a smoking crater o. Sword Guy died and to two underdogs to boot.

21:10 Predictably, he pitched a bitch fit, and so did the rest of the players. We were murderers and outlaws and generally horrible, horrible people for deciding not to deal with the bullshit anymore. Me and Squid didn't give a single fuck. We are right, Yeah, we earned our first actual victory. Sure we were nearly dead, defenseless, and still had to make it to the village, but we won. Things were looking up at least for a little while, and we still had to worry about Zero and his crap. Zero was some kind of king or tyrant or overlord or whatever, and this village was in his little authority zone. So when we finally arrived at the village, guess what special surprise is waiting for us. I bet at zero being a shithead Guards. If you guess invisible, immune to everything, force Field, congratulations, give yourself a gold star. I'm going to take the gold star anyway, if that's all right with you, You're just going to take it online to him, and for good measure. He teleports in and taunts us, saying he'll follow us until we're broken and mad and shut the fuck up already, he cackles and ports away. Squid falls to his knees. He's had enough. We came all this way all for nothing.

22:14 Sure, we beat someone, but he'd be reis and in perfect health the next day. So what do we do now? Squid was ready to quit. That Guard wouldn't have it. We'll train, Squid. We train. I want some music from Rocky playing right, Yeah, I want a montage right here. Training montage, you guys are a part two. Yeah, there's only two parts, and by parts, I mean like it was split up left and right. So that was the left half. Now now we're on the right hand of the front. That's what I have. Way through. We hiked up a nice grassy hill near the village and then proceeded to beat the ever loving crap out of each other. Whenever you got into a fight, you got a couple of points towards leveling, win or lose.

22:56 The only problem is that most characters couldn't spar against one another, as they'll kill each other pretty much immediately. Elemental attacks and weapons combined had huge damage multipliers, so sparring would quickly end up with people dead. We didn't have any weapons, and unarmed combat was a days of whaling on someone to actually kill them. The only reason Squid was all right was because of his firepower, so as long as we didn't use any spirit, we could beat each other. Silly, pass out, wait a while to heal, and do it all over again. Amazing. It was stupid, it was cheesy, and it pissed everyone off, but it fucking worked the way to actually legitimately rope a dope an entire setting. Yeah, some said that the Shadows would attack us, but we were just close enough to the village that they couldn't.

23:40 I'm still not sure why Zero or even the mods let us get away with this shit. I guess they didn't see it as anything to actually be worried about. Eventually we leveled up through it was a slow process, and there were better ways of leveling, but this was all we had. Plus it gave me another fuck ton of spirit points and guarded though pumped up strength first and evenly distributed the rest, got a power to double the rate at which he gained spirit per day. I had a plan. Squid just buffed his fire stats. It was a good way to go. Now we just had to find somewhere to rest up properly, somewhere to regroup. We couldn't just stay and whale on each other for another level. We had gotten lucky the first time, but now there was talk of a few players jumping us. We had to move. Neither of us knew where the hell we were going or what we were doing. We just hit the road and tried to get as far away from zero and everyone else as we could. The mods fucked with us for the first couple of days, but eventually they got bored and left us alone. Sometimes they throw a few shadows our way, but it was nothing we couldn't handle. Random events just stopped happening for us.

24:37 I think it was mainly due to us not really bugging anyone anymore. We were doing our own thing, so everyone just kind of forgot about us, except Zero. Somebody's got a fucking then dead up. Yep, he was still mighty pissy about me living this long. I had no idea what his deal was. Maybe he was just the challenge to his authority that I represented, or maybe he was just a colossal prick. It also might have been one of those dual character situations. The sword guy might have been like Zero's other character. Maybe maybe I'm going with the colossal perk theory. You know what, there's no reason those theory solid theory just a dick. There's no reason those two theories can't live in twine. Yeah, what is it?

25:21 Don't attribute to malice. We could attribute to just being the colossal prick because of how it goes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure either way. Either way. Once we left his authority zone or whatever, he sent one of his lackeys after us. A quick look at his character sheet, and I knew just how much Zero hated us. His name was Golden harl and the dude was basically invincible. Magic armor let him resist all elements massively. Plus it was super late so he could fly around and do his ninja flippy shit. He could heal himself completely by spending a couple of spirit, and his spirit refreshed basically whenever he wanted it to. It was official. The monster just didn't give a shit. Oh, and we were screwed too. All we could do is keep going forward and hope he didn't catch up to us. He did, and damn quick too. He met us while we were traveling along a gorge and promptly tried to knock me over the side. Golden Horror wasn't fucking around. No words only pain, No words only pain. I not so desperately for Golden Horral to actually have said no words. It's the first half of what he said. Greg was no words, but I think he said it. It's funnier if he did say I'll say it more ominously.

26:33 Golden Horror wasn't fucking around, no words only pain. He meant business better. Yes, that's my damn voice of good m M. I barely managed to dodge him, which was of course met with public outcry, but I was dangerously close to the edge. Squid tried to fire punch with a couple of spirit behind it, no cell, and Golden Horral got a free counter attack, because fuck you, he's Golden Horrl. Squid is knocked down, but it gave me an opening. I grabbed Golden Horl by his waist and gave him a souplex. My high strength let me get in a few points of damage and it put me in a better position. It didn't really matter, though, as he was back up and fully healed the second later. I helped Squid up, but we pretty much were already dead. Golden Horral finally spoke up any last words, sucked my dick an he last words Bondzi. The fucker was wide open and his back was at the edge of the cliff too. Oh. A quick PM to Squid was all it took, and the quick plan went off like clockwork. Squid ran diversion, going high for a fire punch to the face. Golden Harral didn't bother to dodge.

27:42 He was invincible, after all. He forgot one thing. Raw spirit can't be resisted. Yes, Edgard though went in for a gut punch, but with all that built up spirit from training in the road, it wasn't enough to kill Golden Harral, not by a loan shot. But it wasn't enough to knock him backwards, and that last step was a doozy Golden Harrow fell down into the canyon, and we only stayed long enough to hear the dull thud of him hitting the ground. I could practically hear Zero grinding his teeth to powder as he tattled to the mods. We really didn't care enough to do anything. Well, well, could they possibly do it and break any rules? Surprisingly, I barely heard anything from Golden Harle's player, just a simple PM saying well played, fair what good? Good for Golden Harllle's player. Yeah, I almost felt sorry that he had to meet his end like that. Honestly, if I was the player, it'd have been like, all right, that was pretty wicked. That was pretty cool. I got a hand it to you, you know what? Fair play. Yeah.

28:37 After that, we were pretty much free to keep going until we hit another village. Zero couldn't get to us there, so no shield and no bullshit. We could finally rest. Well, maybe we were still broke and there was a small army of players after us. Apparently Golden Hall was a pretty popular character, and by killing him, we were now at the top of everyone's hit list. Oh fantastic squids. Slept in an alley and I kept watch trying to get a plan together. We basically had come to a sort of unspoken agreement. Squid was tired of Zero shit, and so was I. We wanted him dead and broken. The problem was that too low level characters could do fuck all against the guy. His level was literally Lictid as an infinity sign, which is again this this game is this game is bad. But yeah, okay, so what is all just with that asterisk next to everything? When Squid took watch, I read over the fluff of the setting looking for something, anything, that can help us. I found it in the city of Haven. Haven was the second biggest city in the setting, just barely smaller than Zero's place. It was kind of a big deal though. See it was home to the spirit Well, it was a font of power that everyone flocked to. As long as you were in Haven, your spirit points recharged instantly up to your cap. Oh no, I didn't have a cap. Oh. I still wonder how anybody in their right mind missed this little detail overflowing spirit. It was just set up so perfectly.

30:02 Maybe I was being a massive bat guy for exploiting this like I did, but I don't really care. I think so. I think you were within your right. At this point, you earned it right. Everyone was after you. Yeah, everyone but a few people were complete assholes, and I wanted their little club destroyed. It was petty, it was stupid. It was probably hurtful to a few people. But Ed Guardeddough had a mission and a guy called Squid was going to help him see it through if they ever got to Haven in one piece. I swear we were the only two people following the traveling rules because the horde of players chasing us caught up a lot quicker than they should have. We had half a day rest before we had to hit the road again. I was useless without a build up of spirit, and Squeak could only offend all so many people before he died.

30:45 The only route to Haven was a long, winding road through the mountains, and we'd be ambushed if we tried to set up camp anywhere. It would take too long and time wasn't on their side. So ed Guarded, though, had a crazy idea. What if they climbed over the mountains? It was basically sue and the random events were especially harsh in that terrain. No one could follow us. After all, something might happen to their super special characters and specialist spelled spe s h u l they're super special characters. Squid was on board, and he brought up an interesting point. The mods were ignoring us. Everyone was so pissed off at us, but in the grand scheme of things, we hadn't really done anything major. We killed the grand total of two characters through sheer luck and broken mechanics, and I had basically given their idle Zero a giant middle finger for simply surviving as long as I had, and Zero could onlys suck so much colk do just get tiring after a while, your jaw starts to hurt, so we start climbing, making rolls and getting through by the skin of our teeth. Every once in a while a mod would glance over and make shit hard for us, but overall we didn't have that much trouble. That's because Tumpa was waiting for us on the other side of the mountain. Of course, it was from our perch we got a view of the players coming for us. There was no way we could take them all, and if we waited, they just get to have in and wait for us there and then there was the guy waiting just underneath us Golden Harrel back from the dead. They must have fished him out

32:15 of the canyon that had him rest. Or maybe he survived the fall and healed. Who knows. We know he saw us, but he didn't move. He could have just jumped up at any time he wanted and murdered us right then and there, but he didn't unexpected how I. After a while, Squid got tired of waiting. He climbed down and Edgardadough followed to have his back in case things went south. Squid asked him what he wanted. Golden Harrel just wanted to talk. Turns out he had more to his story than we knew about. Golden Horror was in this role play just as long as Zero was, and frankly, he was tired of Zero's shit. Yes, yes, yes yes, Goldenhaer earned everything he had and didn't need the resort to whin into the mods to get what he wanted. When he asked why he tried to kill us, he said he was either followed Zero's or orders or get his shit shoved in you know, one on one fight.

33:02 Golden Harle just couldn't compete, mainly because Zero could do whatever the fuck he wanted, and though I'm bad than I, after we killed him, he was basically done. He was satisfied with it with the ending he got, but instead Zero revived him and sent them to kill us again. Golden Harral had other plans, though Squid was suspicious, but I believed him. I'm still not sure why. Maybe I was desperate, but I told them our planned. Technically I told everyone our plan and it was as it was in one of the public threads. I'm an idiot assuming, Yes, this is like the only real indication we have of like what kind of game this was. So I still don't know if this is like purely discord or you know, how old the story is this? This looks like it was posted in twenty thirteen. Yeah, so like was discoorded. It might have been Skype or one of those third party like I think less, some sort of forum based thing where like everything's public. So yeah, there's so a relic from the old bay. Yes, so it's never really clear what the physical mechanics of playing this game war, but that's not importing as the story's fucking great.

34:04 Golden Harl said he would get us to have him. His story was over and he ceased giving a single fuck about what anyone else had to say about his He only had one condition. We had to promise to kill Zero and end this once and for all. Yes, Edgardadough and Squid agreed. This is our only shot, and we weren't about to throw it away. A massive shit storm erupted from the player base as we joined up with Golden Harrel. Zero called him a trader to everything the role play stood for, and everyone made such a fuss that the mods nearly banned the guy Ah so close were nearly there. Golden Harrel had a bit of a sway with the mods too, and he got lucky as shit when they took his side and he pointed out that he had done nothing wrong with the mods appeased. That just left the army of players gunning for us. The second we hit the road, they were on us. There was no fucking around anymore, and the travel rules were basically out of the picture. A horde of superpowered loaners and misfits charged towards us, flinging fire and let and all manner of weapons, all of them driven by their singular hatred of Edgarda. Though a guy called Squid and the trader Golden Harral, Golden Horral whether the tide, taking kunai and fireballs and shadow spears without so much as flinching, because fuck you, he's Golden Horrel. God bless him right, Honestly, that's some divine protection on him right there for some reason, And I think it's just because the name is similar. I'm picturing him as Goldar from Original Power Rangers.

35:25 Same here on. Me and Squid ran behind Golden Harral as he cleared a path getting us to the other side of the army. As we kept going down the path, Golden Harral stayed behind, covering our escape. To this day, I do not know if he survives or not. I will never forget his bravery. Since everyone else was doing it. We ignored the shrave of rules ourselves, arriving and having nearly instantly zero bitch, nobody hurt him. Good fucky zero Fuck this guy. There was one last obstacle, though, one last player, King k H A I n E. Of course, the King is already an edgy name because he do it, even more because he's a white middle Scholler Caine, the Shadow answer this fucking guy.

36:07 Somebody read the Bible. I see like this fucking guy. He had a power letting him control shadow. His interpretation of what this actually did was very, very loose. It always says, love it. And since he was in Haven, he could abuse this like nobody's business. As soon as we set foot in the cities, Squid and Me instantly got paralyzed. We call him on this bullshit. Not sure why I control the darkness in people's hearts, the darkness in everyone's soul. You are mine, he continues, and I quote, oh, eat a bag of dicks. Squid tells him that's not how it works. Caine isn't listening because it's his power, and he says, that's how it works. And where Meanwhile, I just sit back and ask myself a question. Why can't I hold all this spirit, spend infinite spirit, break Caine's hold grace for whining? How you can't resist me?

37:07 The darkness is in everyone's heart. I'm just a pure little bean. Though, Okay, it's Edgardo's turn to be cheesy. You are wrong. My soul is a shining beacon, filled with a light and a burning hope that no shadow can touch. It is a pinpoint of justice, a shining star, that will deliver freedom to the universe. I will root out the darkness, the evil of this land. No shadow will be spared my light. Caine just can't comprehend how he's about to lose. He tries to shadow prouse this thing again. No cell, infinite spirit, Who the hell do you think you're dealing with? Ohait, no wrong voice? Who the hell do you think you're dealing with? Banzai swift, uppercut, battle cry, unlimited raw spirit, punch. Caine gets punched. Yes, Caine gets punched into the sun. Yes on the Sun, home boy. Cue shit being lost by absolutely everyone again. Squid is okay. We rest up and figure out our next move. My ultrapower only works if I'm in Haven. That doesn't do us a lot of good. Squid finds out that Haven's unlimited spirit effect lingers for a day after we leave. Zero is weeks away in his city. More players are on their way to Haven, and even though I have infinite Spirit, I can only use it to punch people. I'll get killed. Eventually, we're basically stuck until I notice that we've leveled up.

38:29 I don't really give a fuck about my stats at this point, but there's a power that really catches my eye. Teleportation. I have exactly enough points to purchase it. Normally I wouldn't have enough spirit to use it, but haven so it works. Squid upgraded his fire punch. It was a good way to go. I tell Squid that he can stay behind. This is going to be dangerous, that we might not come back. He tells me that he's with me to the end, and he intends to see things through and that he's got my back no matter what. In the middle of town square edguarded though and a guy called Squid shared a sweaty, shirtless muscly man hug for all the world to see, and happy pride everybody, uh and and and, quoting the story here verbatim, it was super homo. Yes, yes, homo a little. I think this is coming out the last day of Jews, so happy, so we'll put a cap on Pride with this one, happy bride. I'm just gonna say it again, it was super homo. Actually, we just had to be touching it so I could teleport us both. But shut up, Yeah it works. We ride outside the city and the shield was still up. Zero mocked us, saying that he was invincible behind this wall and that we couldn't do anything. This shield can withstand a thousand times the force of anything that could possibly throw at it.

39:47 People just keep forgetting raw spirit can't be resisted by anything. I'll just have to hit it a thousand times harder bums. I I still flinch whenever I remember typing that so damn cheesy. It's so good though. It really is one more battle cry, blow infinite spirit and nothing. Excuse me, not a damn thing, no wrong. Zero refused to post an actual RP after that. I think he had a stroke or something. He posted plenty of the discussion threads, though everyone did. The entire community spammed the forums, declaring that I should be banned, flayed, and hung from my Shenanigans. The next day, when I tried to log in, I found that the forums have been shut down due to popular opinion. I never saw a Squid after that. We never exchanged emails or anything. I like to think that Edgarddough is still frozen in that moment in time, his fist crashing through the shield and connecting with Zero's big stupid face, and Edgardo is smiling.

40:49 He won. He and Squid and Golden harle they won. They really fucking did. Yeah, they did. That's incredible. That is the ballad of Edgardough. Oh my god, that doesn't That isn't epic bordering on like the Odyssey. It's not D and D. But tell me, this is one of the greatest RPCE stories. I love this story. I love doing this episode because I hadn't read this story in a long time and I forgot how just just just beautiful, just beautiful it is, and the pie is funny. I'm going to put a link to this is a screen cap of all the original four chance stuff. Is I even on one of the D and D or roleplay subreddits. I'm finding this on our Slaze Green Text put it on our website. So I'm calling for Chane Walking for this. Well, don't chan No, I'm gonna post the screenshot of this whole thing, which is what I read it from. So it's good enough. We'll post that in the show notes. But oh man, what was your what was your favorite part? Greg? Oh? My favorite part is going toward uh switching sides, because it's absolutely you can you can feel in horror, going in horror, sorry, you can feel the fire is just I'm done. I had you out played me like any legit, and he went fairly by outlaid him. Yeah. That was like, yeah, that's just a welt just that was my favorite was actually got kicked off the off the cliff. That was great. I also very much like when they were like, mods aren't looking, Yeah, we can just do whatever, and then you have your

42:22 training montage. It's it's the whole story is beautiful from beginning to end, because this is somebody that knows like, Okay, they're gonna fuck with us no matter what we do, so we might as well have fun with it. Yeah, my favorite part had to be I mean, there's so many funny moments in here. Punching him into the sun. Yeah, I think that's that's why I lost. That's why I can read it. This sneaking gets punched into this deserved to be punched into the sun. I controlled the darkness in your heart, shut the up and like, I stand by that voice of thousand percent because you know someone who controls the darkness, that little nippling that's Mandarth. Well, god stop, that controlled the darkness speedy my love. Oh man, I've made them even less threatening, So I want to do more classic tales from the Internet, like about playing tales from the Internet like this. Do I know a couple more at the top of my head. But if there's any that like that that you the listener want us to read and uh and share, and especially if it's one I never heard of, please send it over. I want to read this thing. This was a blast, is well my favorite episodes we've done yet. Yeah, so I'm glad this worked out because I did not know how this was going to go. Any party thoughts, guys, Yeah, don't be a shithead and you won't get fucking launched into this hunt. But if you're surrounded by shitheads, become the embodiment of chaos. My party thought is banzai. Guys, thanks for listening. Well, see you next time. Bye bye.

43:54 Thank you for listening to Communtions and Jackens. Please share this with your favorite adventure, leave a review on Apple, and follow us on social media. All links can be found at Curmudgeons and Dragons dot com. Practice Safe Adventuring my Friends,