Jason: you

Jay: That brings us to the end of the episode of Daggers and Drams. Thank you for spending some time with us. Whether you're painting minis, driving home from work, preparing for your next session, or simply escaping into another world for a little while, we're grateful you've chosen to join us at the table. If you enjoyed today's adventure, please consider liking the video, subscribing to the channel, and leaving a comment below. Not only does it help us grow,

Jason: Previously on Deep Six. wonder where I go when I die Underneath the surface I hear voices

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Jason: Trying to get to heaven, but it's all hell And every day I wake up I still wonder if I'm dead or alive Six feet deep, deep six Sitting in the middle of heaven and hell

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Jason: The judiciary courts of Redencia do not simply open for the day. They engage at the first bell. Boilers ignite beneath marble floors. At the second, pneumatic tubes begin firing sealed documents from chamber to chamber. At the third, transcription engines start hammering witness statements into brass plates.

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Jason: By the fourth, the city's crimes, debts, disputes, disappearances, petitions, and inconvenient corpses have begun their long journey through the machine of justice. You work in the Hall of Records. Magda works in the Hall of Records at a narrow desk behind a brass placard which reads, irregularities, sealed transcripts, and posthumous amendments. It's not a glamorous post. It's worse than that. It's useful. Judges decide what the law means. Advocates decide how loudly it should be interpreted. Constables decide who gets dragged through the doors. But records officers decide what the city remembers afterwards. In Vredencia, that can be more dangerous than a blade. Around you, the court grinds on. Masked auditors watch pressure gauges labeled treason, murder, sole misappropriation, consulate interference, mechanical personhood, and divine liability. Junior clerks run files between brass lifts. Legal stamps slam down in steady rhythm. Evidence crates rise from the lower vaults of rattling chains. Somewhere beneath the floor, An overworked boiler coughs like an old judge clearing his throat. By mid-morning, you've already seen enough irregularities to sour the day. A forged death certificate, a prisoner whose warrant arrived the day after his arrest, a missing witness listed as legally present, and a radiant consulate request asking for a case file to be clarified before review. In court language, clarified usually means cut it until it bleeds in the correct direction. And then a black brass capsule arrives at your desk. It drops from the tube above hard enough to dent the wood. Black brass means private judicial review, sealed authority, high level interference. Inside is a correction order concerning seized automaton remains from the lower markets. The remains are to be reclassified. Not as stolen, not as confiscated, not as evidence, but donated research material. There is no proper case number, no witness chain, no lawful transfer stamp. At the bottom of the order are two names. Cassian Volgrave and Vespera Volgrave. And hidden in the watermark, faint enough that another clerk might miss it, is the outline of an eye. Around you, the courts continue their work. Stamps fall, tubes rattle, boilers hiss, advocates argue, clerks run, and somewhere above, a judge passes a sentence. But the pattern is there now. One missing automaton register. Two sealed excavation permits. Three witness schedules altered. Four lower layered deaths with no bodies attached. Five small lies standing very close together. By midnight, the Hall of Records has emptied. Cabinet 12, row 6 should not contain automaton seizures, noble research exemptions, lower layer permits, and sealed disappearance reports in the same index chain, but it does. cabinet unlocks with a sound like reluctant confession. Inside waits a ledger bound in black leather and brass wire. No title, no case number, no court stamp, only the same eye pressed into the cover. somewhere in the dark hall behind you a door opens. What do you do in this moment? Is there anywhere I can hide? ⁓ yeah, there are different stacks. you know, this is, this is kind of the deep, ⁓ library stacks, you know, like you might find in a university or, or in, you know, any of the great judicial buildings, know, you are deep underground and probably in a place where, ⁓ not many people would go. So it is strange, certainly due to the time of day that it is that anyone would be coming down here other than. Yeah. But yeah, there, there, you would know this area pretty well. ⁓ So let's say, ⁓ make an intelligence check for. First roll? First roll. What's my intelligence plus three? 16. Okay. All right, ⁓ so you managed to duck behind kind of one of the sides of these great outcoats, right? ⁓ You know, sort of to the end of a bookshelf, if you would, right? So that anybody passing directly by would see you, but if they came down that particular aisle, then they might discover you there. ⁓ The Hall of Records does not become silent when it's empty, it becomes louder. in smaller ways, the ticking of cooling pipes, the dragging of chains settling in the walls, the distant cough of the boiler, the soft mechanical breath of the indexing engines. With only seconds, you slip away from the open cabinet and into the shadow of this tall rotating case file rack. Its shelves are packed with leather folders, brass tags, and dust thick enough to taste. Through the narrow gaps between the files, you can still see the black ledger lying exposed inside cabinet 12. The doors open fully and three figures enter. The first figure is a court clerk in grey gloves, carrying a lantern with blue glass. The second is a masked court officer with one hand resting on a shock baton. third is not dressed for records work at all. A woman in dark silk. Her posture too still. Too certain. She speaks with an air of authority. And while you can't make out the entire conversation as they're walking in, and frankly, just over the sound of your own heartbeat in that moment, ⁓ but you do pick up on one name. You hear ⁓ the clerk who has entered with the lantern ⁓ address her, and he's apologizing profusely to her and addresses her as Lady Valkyrie. So one of the names which you just picked up on that ledger. She does not look around immediately as she enters the room, but she's just kind of taking in her surroundings and almost still focused on one particular point, but she's listening. ⁓ You're not sure for what the blue lantern homes softly. with its arcane magic. Its light crawls across the floor, over the desk, over the open cabinet, over the ledger. The clerk whispers, it was accessed less than a minute ago. Vesper turns her head slightly. I need you to make a stealth roll for me, please. 13. Okay. You feel well hidden. Vesper turns her head slightly. Then our curious little functionary is either nearby, as she steps closer to the shelves, or already running as she wheels and turns back to the clerk. The masked officer moves towards the main aisle, blocking the way out of this grand hallway. The clerk reaches for the ledger, and Vesper raises one hand. No, leave it open. For a moment, the sound, the only sound is the machinery in the walls. And then you feel it. A faint pressure behind your eyes, like someone trying to remember their face or a face before they have seen it. Vesper is not searching the room, she is searching the pattern. The blue lantern brightens. A brass tag on the shelf beside Magda begins to tremble. Do you stay perfectly still? Try to slip deeper into the stacks? Create a distraction or do something else? ⁓ I reckon if I move she's gonna sense me. and the spell I wanted to do was verbal, which does not help me in that situation. cargo invisible. Okay, now that spell, it, what are the, is it semantic as well? it says BSN. Now you could try and say it lightly, that would require a stealth role I was going say because I could also do a minor illusion. Yeah. Either one? I think I'm going do a minor illusion. Okay. What illusion would you create? I'm going to create a sound out in the hallway. It sounds kind of like someone tripping over something. Okay. So they think that I'm, hopefully think that I'm running away. Alright. What is the, is there any sort of, ⁓ like intelligence check that people have to make to be fooled by that or is it just more of a... If a creature takes a study action to examine the sound or image, the creature can determine that it is an illusion with a successful intelligence investigation check against your spell save DC. So in that moment, you shape the smallest thread of magic that you dare to try in this moment. Not light, not movement, only sound. Out of the hallway, beyond the open record door, a sharp metallic clatter rings out like dropped evidence canister rolling across the marble. The masked officer reacts first, baton half drawn. I won't make some rules. Okay. The masked officer reacts first, baton half drawn. The clerk jolts so hard that the blue lantern swings in his hand, both of them wheeling back towards the door. Vespera does not flinch. Her eyes remain on the shelves. sound comes again. A hollow roll, a scrape, and then the faint hiss of a pneumatic capsule venting pressure. The officer looks to Vespera. She waits one second too long. Check it. The mass officer moves into the hallway quickly, followed by the clerk, a little bit more reluctant, holding the blue lantern high to try and see every inch of the space that he can. For a few precious moments, Vespera is alone in the records room. Or so she thinks. Perhaps. That's what she thinks. She steps towards the open cabinet. Her fingers hover over the black ledger, but she still does not touch it. Clever, she says quietly to the room. Not to you directly. Not quite. The hallway distraction has worked, but only partly. From your position you can see that the exit is less guarded but Vesper remains near the ledger. You have a narrow opening. You can try and slip away while the others are distracted. You can seize or copy one piece of evidence from the ledger. You would have enough time to do that, you think. or hide deeper and listen. or you can take a risk against Vespera directly. like to look at some evidence. ⁓ So are a couple of different things that you could possibly try and take down before lady Vespera made her way back over to that area. She's kind of, she's kind of on a patrol, if you will. She's kind of making a circle around the So you feel like you would have enough time ⁓ to take maybe something from the page which lists ⁓ the Volgrave's names ⁓ as private sponsors of this recovered mechanical asset. ⁓ you could take note of. what looks to be directional information concerning the lower routes beneath the city, a transport path marked beneath the old Cistern line, ending at a sealed access point called Gate 6. you happened upon an inventory list, ⁓ a list of missing or reclassified automaton cores, several that have been marked with different notes. ⁓ You don't feel like you'd be able to memorize these kinds of things that you would need to have some way of, you know, writing them down or something like that. ⁓ In your mind, all these things put together ⁓ make a logical path of what's possibly happening here. ⁓ So there's a bit of a trail. ⁓ So a set of initials besides altered warrants, sealed transcripts, and disappearing records, right? ⁓ You can make note of these initials. ⁓ As well as the eye marking you can make note of that. Yeah as well ⁓ and I only have time to make a rule of one. Make a perception check first of all. That's not what I want. Oof, plus six perception, so 16. All right. You notice another name that's familiar to you. There is a short marginal note and it just says, three tongue asking in wrong places. Monitor, do not remove. So, oil and three tongue works in the same building as you. Okay. And while you don't know him extremely well, ⁓ you do get the feeling that ⁓ he as well has stumbled upon some information that whoever is pulling the strings in this doesn't want to come to light. And so that that might be someone that you could contact as well. ⁓ But those are your six options as to what you could take down. And I can only take down one. Right. I'm gonna take down my new friend's name. Okay. Alright. ⁓ So, nearest to the shelf that you're standing on, ⁓ there are what looks to be kind of very thin, almost wax-like, pure black paper and some very kind of a dark purple chalk. And you know that this is one of the methods which is used for ⁓ kind of phosphorantly copying documents and moving information without moving ⁓ actual physical evidence from the lockup. So this is a researcher's tool which you would be very adept at using and you feel like you'd be able to take that information quickly with that. Make a dexterity roll from natural 19. Dex is... Where are you my friend? I need to print out my thing. So is it over 20? It's a dirty 20. It is, but it does hit 20. It does hit 20. All right. You're actually so fast with this tool because you use it on a daily basis. You think you've got time to do one more to get one more. right. So what would be useful information? I think I would also take down the I. Okay. Alright, ⁓ so you quickly find a page that both has the note regarding Oral and Three Tongue ⁓ and an eye on it and you just quickly swipe that whole page and you fold it, put it into your... I'm also making myself notes so I remember what the fuck I was... I've had to do that a couple times, go back and listen to the episodes to remember what name I've given people. Yeah, might need to send me the name because... what are you saying? Or Latin? Orlan. O-R-L-A-N? Yeah. Okay. and say coworker who doesn't know we're gonna be best friends. So you're kind of looking over that page ⁓ without hesitation you're doing this because you know she's coming around the turn. ⁓ But you have one page edge which bears Orland Three-Tongue's name and then one torn ritual notation, an eye inside a broken gear. Just beneath the eye it writes or it reads, the vessel requires witness. You fold both pieces small and press them into your pocket. Then the room changes. Not loudly, not dramatically, but just enough. The ticking of the indexing engines falls out of rhythm. One file rack clicks a half second too late. A brass drawer behind you slides shut by itself. Vesper turns. Her eyes do not find you immediately. but they do find the absence of where you In your line of work, you know that the pattern, which is how it is referred to most often, ⁓ that there is a trail in every existence, in every moment. There is a residue, almost. And you get the feeling that Vespra is very in tune with that. ⁓ Immediately she comes over to the journal where you were just working. She flips back and forth, making note of the missing corner of the page, the disturbed dust on the journal or the ledger. ⁓ The fact that it's open slightly at the wrong angle. ⁓ From the hallway, the masked officer calls. Nothing here, m'lady. Vespera smiles faintly. No, she says. There is. She raises one hand, and the blue lantern light in the hallway bends inward, spilling through the door like water running uphill. The shadows between the shelves begin to shrink. You have the evidence, but your hiding place is collapsing. You have options, as you always have options. Anyone who is in tune with the pattern itself always has options. You can run for the service stairs before the officer returns, slip deeper into the archive stacks and risk being trapped. Use another spell or distraction to break Vesper's search. Reveal yourself and try to bluff the authority. destroy or scatter the ledger so that they cannot know exactly what you took. or something else entirely. ⁓ Right. need to check and make sure. I'm gonna create a bonfire. Okay. Where and how? I'm gonna create a bonfire right around... That's the spell that you have? Yeah. Right the Okay, how big is this bonfire? Well, I'm gonna make it weak. I'm gonna make it... pretty much just encompassing the ledger. Okay, so you want to try and destroy the other end of the okay? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright. I'm not familiar with this spell. Is it somatic? Is it verbal? What do you have to do? Yeah, hold on. Sorry, my phone's gone. It's gone in bedtime mode. I think I'm in bedtime mode. Yeah. Yeah, it's both. So I'm gonna whisper it. Okay. So roll stealth check first. What? On the table. I'm a hobbit! Haha! Not a hobbit, halfling. Well, and it hit the table. And it the table, yeah. Okay, so that's a natural 16, and what is... I need to print out my sheet. Um, stealth... I love that you screamed, I'm a hobbit. I know. 17 for stealth. Okay. Uh, yep, so... You feel that you're able to do that...definitely enough that no one should be able to say... Like even if they hear it, they wouldn't be able to tell where it's coming from. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously they're gonna know something's happening. Obviously a book doesn't just explode and... I don't know, Verdansi is a weird...weird place. Yes, so...where is my bonfire? Yeah, so until the spell ends, the magic bonfire fills a five-foot cube. Any creature in the bonfire space when you cast this spell must succeed on a dexterity saving throw or take 1d8 fire damage. And then they must do a saving throw when it moves from the bonfire space for the first time. Okay. Alright, so I'll make a couple rolls here. All right, so describe for me how this happens. Is this like a throne thing or it just emerges from that one point? It emerges up. Okay. So it just kind of goes whoosh. All right. ⁓ So you snap your hand towards this opening cabinet and a spark catches and then another and then another. And for half a heartbeat, the black ledger simply smolders there and you think maybe it's not going to take. ⁓ But then it does. The flame blooms across the brass-wired spine, licking hungrily through dry paper, wax seals, and old ink. The eye pressed into the cover blackens, curls and splits as you watch this pretty hefty journal ⁓ just literally go up in smoke. The records erupts into motion. Warning bells begin clanging overhead. ⁓ Archival fire systems ⁓ kind of... ⁓ begin worrying and snapping into place, hear sprinklers going off in certain parts. ⁓ and you hear other voices now, not just from the three that you've been, been, ⁓ encountering here. ⁓ so other people are now coming and you see that that starts to, ⁓ that alarms Vesper more than anything, right? brass shutters slammed down over nearby shelves, steam vents, shriek, ⁓ The indexing engines begin ejecting drawers in panic, ⁓ spitting case files onto the floor. ⁓ From the hallway, the masked officer again ⁓ starts swearing. You feel like you got caught in some of those sprinkler systems. ⁓ Vespera does not panic. She steps towards the burning ledger. Her face is lit up from your perspective. ⁓ gold and red and for the first time there's real anger in her expression. ⁓ Not fear but anger. She lifts her hand and the fire twists sideways, trying to fold in on itself, but the damage is already done. Half the ledger is ash, the rest is burning too fast to save cleanly. clerk rushes in horrified. So this guy's entire existence is to keep pristine anything which comes in this building. ⁓ And he literally just kind of hits his knees. My lady, the suppression system, huh. And he just kind of falls ⁓ in front of her just in disbelief. ⁓ Find her. The words are quiet. The room seems to obey her. The shadows pull back. The blue lantern flares white. Every brass tag on every shelf trembles. You have seconds before this room itself points directly to you. through the smoke and the steam and all of these safety measures which have been ⁓ going off here. ⁓ They provide you with some cover and a little bit of an opportunity. ⁓ You still have the service stairs, ⁓ but they're partially blocked now by following files. ⁓ You have the pneumatic dispatch hatch, barely large enough for anyone to crawl through, but you think you just might be able to. The lower evidence lift descending towards the sealed vault level. So rather than going out, would you go deeper into the vaults? I think I would crawl in the little... Okay. All right. So you're going to go for the pneumatic dispatch. Yeah. Okay. So again, you choose the route that most would not even assume, particularly those three that you feel are hunting for you the closest right now. So you feel that that is your best bet. It's meant for sealed document canisters, not people. ⁓ But the fire suppression shutters are dropping, the room is filling with steam. And Vespera's search magic is tightening around the shelves like a closing fist. You throw yourself towards the brass hatch and only briefly make note of the warning plate. ⁓ You don't read it fully, but you know what it says because they all say the same thing throughout the building. ⁓ Document transfer only. ⁓ No living matter, no cursed matter, no litigation in progress. ⁓ The hatch is hot to the touch. Behind you, Vesper's voice cuts through the smoke. Stop! Not shouted, commanded. The word hits the room like a judge's hammer. For one awful second, her limbs lock, and the stolen scraps in your pocket give a tiny crinkle. Orland's name, the eye and the broken gear, the vessel requires witness. Enough. You force yourself through the hatch, ⁓ just as Vesper's magic snaps towards your hiding place. So you feel like ⁓ she's reaching for what was lost, some sort of ⁓ a bastardization of a mending spell. She's to find what was missing from that pile of ash. ⁓ And so that's what she's reaching for, not for you. ⁓ you feel like if she had been reaching for you specifically, she would have been able to find you. ⁓ The tube for you just swallows you, right? I mean, it is ⁓ again, not meant for, you know, anyone to actually travel through, but if anyone's going to do it, you are the perfect size for it. this is, you know, a water slide in a water park for you, but in kind of in reverse. So it's more Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory with this pneumatic tube. You just kind of go in what would seem to be many, many directions, ⁓ kind of haphazardly. There's a violent rush of pressure. ⁓ Your shoulder clips a rivet at one point, ⁓ your knees slamming against the curved brass, and the world becomes heat, speed, and darkness, and the deafening roar of air dragging through the... the veins of this court system. ⁓ behind you, the hat shrieks open again and someone has opened the system manually. Uh, the two behead splits in three directions marked by brass plaques and you can kind of lean to one side of the other. So you can go left, can stay the course or you can go right. Uh, so to the left, have transcript sorting public chambers, have sealed evidence, lower vaults, and you have outbound legal dispatch sitting at. Outbound. I wanna. I roll for me a dexterity check. ⁓ 16. Okay. ⁓ you twist your body hard to that direction. ⁓ the tube junction slams you sideways and for one brutal second, you're weightless inside the darkness. ⁓ then the pressure takes you again. ⁓ so it's almost as if you've been thrown out into another, ⁓ chain of this tube system and then followed in with the flow of that one. ⁓ Outbound legal dispatch city network. the safest option. It's also the least controlled. The tube drops sharply carrying you out of the hall of records and into the wider court network. You hear the building around you as if from inside of its own bones, ⁓ stamps, hammering boilers, roaring gears, turning clerks, clerks shouting somewhere beyond the walls. You have. a bit of a flashback at like how many times you've been sitting at your desk and you've sent, you know, countless memos and different things through this pneumatic system. And, you know, probably because of your size, but you always just had a little bit of a daydream as to what it would be like, you know, to ride the pneumatic system because it was obviously strictly forbidden for safety reasons. ⁓ You're hearing all this thing from beyond the walls and then another sound joins it. A bell, not the fire alarm, a pursuit bell. So Vespera has not sent guards after you. She has sent the system. this person has some sort of here, even though she's not, ⁓ an officer of any kind. She doesn't work for the court systems. You're not sure what her pull is or how she was able to just kind of command the clerk and the guard to kind of be with her in that moment. And it almost seems as if they were compliant in whatever she was doing. possibly, you know, ⁓ You know, they might be inside men for her. Or it could be that her power has that much reach. Ahead of you, a red signal flares inside the tube. A sorting gate begins to close, trying to redirect you into a holding canister meant for intercepted documents. So they're trying to shut the pneumatic system down because they know that that's where you... ⁓ Again, you have only seconds. The two branches again. You can let the gate catch you and risk being dropped into a secure mail room. ⁓ You can kick through the sorting grate and spill out somewhere unknown in the courts. You can cast a spell inside the tube, maybe try and overload the dispatch pressure. ⁓ You can grab at passing canisters and try to steal a destination. You didn't take pneumatic tube deflection? Funnily enough. ⁓ ⁓ No, that would kill me. I was gonna try and blow up the gate. Whatever you want to do? Well, what I... No, not blow up the gate. I wanted to try and freeze the gate, but the spell I have does not allow full freezing. Yeah. Which is annoying. How... How close is the gate or the hatch or whatever to...? You have maybe seconds. Okay. So this is kind of, again, a... branching section here. So you're reaching the end of the ride in some form or fashion. I really want to blast it. Wait. So what spell were you thinking about using? Well, so I have Sorcerer's Burst. Uh-huh. and it's acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, psychic, Okay. Make an intelligence roll. Or wisdom, either one, whichever is higher. ⁓ Jesus. Well, I rolled a natural three. So I am not intelligent in this moment in time. Intelligence or wisdom? ⁓ they're both plus three, so a mighty six. Yeah. Again, like. You're not sure what the difficulty level would be. ⁓ but you do feel like if you wanted to try and cool down the great again, because this, this pneumatic system, ⁓ it runs hot, you know? So again, you know, you're thinking back to those, those warning plaques, ⁓ on the thing. And you know that those, that those greats get hot. where things are ejected from. ⁓ So if you tried to cool it down, it might weaken the metal. Yeah. It would just depend on the timing and... I'll do it. Blast it with cold. Okay. All right. ⁓ So... So what does that look like? So, well, what I'm envisioning is just going like this with my hand, cold, shooting out. Yeah. Are you going down head first? Yeah, I'm envisioning going feet first. so like I'm envisioning going, Alright, okay. Yeah, so let's see where that's gonna lead you. Okay, I have no idea what to get you to roll to this because it's not necessarily strength no Dex Yeah, like so so you do make make purchase with your spell yeah, and you can see that it's had this elemental reaction where almost instantly this kind of glowing hot gate is ⁓ Is cool too fast and you can see it ⁓ begin to oxidize in that moment ⁓ So yeah, we'll say dexterity to to to try and know You know how to place your feet and how to hold the most momentum as you crash into this gate. Yeah So yeah make a dexterity rule for Nine. Nine plus? No, that's a nine. I'm only plus one for a dex. Okay. All right. So yeah, you... The sorting gate frosts over instantly brass teeth, rune hinges, pressure seals, all glaze white in this moment. as you hit the gate, the gate shatters. ⁓ but you do take some initial damage. Okay. So shards of this gate, ⁓ you know, you don't just, just completely blow the thing out. Right. ⁓ So you kind of ⁓ bits of it are tearing at your clothing and your skin as you as you're pushed from the pneumatic tube ⁓ and you take six points of slashing damage. ⁓ So in a storm of broken brass, frozen paper scraps and legal canisters rolling hard across the polished floor of what you know to be a mail room, ⁓ specifically a secure mail room where things are sent for ⁓ court litigation or to send private documents between ⁓ parties. ⁓ for one second, everything stops. ⁓ There are three male clerks in this room and they just kind of staring at you. One is holding a tray of outgoing warrants. One has a sandwich halfway to his mouth and one slowly lowers a stamp, which is marked void. And he just kind of is automatically still doing his job, not knowing what in the hell is going on. ⁓ behind you, the broken tube screams steam into the room. ⁓ and a red alarm light begins turning overhead and they're just kind of looking around like what is, I mean, these are the night shift in a mail room. ⁓ You know, ⁓ this is probably, ⁓ you know, these, these are not guys anywhere near your rank. and you know, they are, they're not scared. They are very confused. One of the speaking pipes crackles on the walls. Containment breach in outbound dispatch. Suspect is small, armed and legally unresolved. The clerks look at each other. They look back at you. They look at the shattered tube and the frozen gate pieces on the ground. One clerk quietly sets down his sandwich and reaches towards the alarm lever. ⁓ You still have the scraps in your pocket. ⁓ But the room is closing. Brass shutters are beginning to drop over the doors to this room. he's making a side swipe with this large axe and Orlands ⁓ off of the axe as it as it passes by in front of him and does kind of a flip in the air. comes down and stabs the bugbear ⁓ kind straight the chest with one of his blades and leaves it inside. So the bugbear already coughing and spitting up blood, ⁓ walks forward. with his axe as if he's gonna make an attack, ⁓ drops the axe and yields.