Session 8 · Runtime 1:03:30 · Subscribe to the podcast
Roger drinks the wine and tells the party how his story ended, so that theirs might not: a band just like them, forty-five years ago, who traced their gift of knowledge to a glowing pool at Krezk — and then met a creature on the road, half raven, half man, that said “Greetings, friend, I come in peace,” and killed it. The land never forgave them. His battered cards go on the table next to the party’s fates, and the one difference matters more than all the matches: his destined ally was the raven. Then the taproom empties its pockets — a landlady whose family owns the winery in the south, two lordlings with a maddened sister and a grudge, and a mustachioed bard who says the devil’s name out loud and goes to bed with “I shall watch you with great interest.” In the morning Lily wakes free of the pies at last — and the party walks into an orphanage where the groundskeeper lies under a necromantic curse, three boys are missing, and a small boy in a padlocked attic introduces himself as Mostly Felix. What pours out of him goes through steel like rumor, wears Drew for thirty terrible seconds, and drinks from Osric’s chest — until an angel’s ward, a god’s radiance, and a rusted locket end the argument. And then the man who woke up says the eight words that break the whole case open. Stay past the credits.
Chapters
| 00:00 | Cold Open |
| 02:17 | A Battered Set of Cards |
| 09:12 | Lake’s Haunted |
| 14:16 | Don’t Kill the Ravens |
| 17:39 | The Wine Must Flow |
| 22:10 | No Mere Bard |
| 26:59 | Chug, Chug, Chug |
| 31:03 | Entirely Normal About Pies |
| 34:45 | A Perfectly Normal Orphanage |
| 44:19 | Mostly Felix |
| 49:36 | Out of My Way |
| 57:34 | Where Are the Bones? |
| 1:01:11 | Next Time |
| 1:02:24 | Stinger |
Read along: Session 8 Recap · Session 8 Field Notes · Stay past the credits.