The camera fades in on the back of Sybil as she is in the middle of the process of hacking away at the spectral chains.

In this hidden room of the labyrinth where she has found a unique rook stone, her swings cleave through these spectral chains.

Silently and somewhere in the enormous expanse of the dungeons below the Colostle and the room lands, the silent shattering of these spectral chains rings out.

The camera quickly follows one of these receding chains as it moves.

Impossibly fast through walls of stone and caverns, yet seen undiscovered places in the dungeons as it weaves and winds, its way frantically flailing until it falls through the ceiling of a chamber within which is an irregularly shaped wall or structure.

It's hard to tell.

But as these spectral chains fall, it continues to zoom in on where these spectral chains were connected to.

Inside of this strange structure, the tension that was holding whatever this is tightly is gone, and there is a groaning sag, the grinding of stone as it moves on its own for the first time, and who knows how long.

And within this structure, a gigantic cog make its first movement.

In a very long time and the silence that has been dominating the intro to this episode is suddenly broken with a loud clunk and grinding of stone as something.

Has begun working again.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode seven of my Colostle Dungeons series here on the Rene Plays Games podcast.

We are into December, so there's really not much to talk about as far as announcements, 'cause I don't wanna get ahead of myself.

Let's just end the year so.

Stay tuned.

Next week will be a prospective checks interview with Kat the dungeon mom, A wonderful actual play podcaster and creative mind in the T-T-R-P-G community.

All about playing with younger players, and we talk a lot about raising the next generation of nerds and how to make this hobby not only accessible for all, but.

Better for people coming into it or being raised around it in a way that you can challenge norms and find ways to grow through it and think more consciously about games and decisions and mechanics and all that.

I'm not gonna get into talking about 2026.

I am gonna end the year on a discussion about how this year went, what I learned, what I liked, things I'd like to change and do differently.

But yeah, let's just say I'm, I'm staying busy for sure, and I have some plans for next year that hopefully you enjoy.

We'll see.

If you have opinions on it, you know, like I always say at the end of the episode, join the dm, such a dark Discord to talk to me about it.

Or email me at Rene plays games pod@gmail.com.

There's also another episode that went up before this is getting released 'cause this is getting released late.

So again, thank you for your patience.

The end of the year has really.

Tested my availability for scheduling things and editing time, but I was on an episode of Under Common Taste with Ian and James, and we talked all about post-apocalyptic media or in my preferred parlance, especially in regards to the game that I'm hoping to release early next year, post Catastrophe Media, if the world changed forever, tomorrow or tonight or right now, and the power went out.

You know what, what about those stories is engaging to us?

What about it is important and how can something like a game about the otherwise real world in a really, really awful time teach us about not only.

Planning, thinking ahead, surviving natural disasters and living alongside nature and all of this stuff, but also humanity and community.

It was a really fun talk.

I hope that you go check it out.

I will link the episode in the description of this podcast.

Go check out Ian and under Common Tastes and I'm gonna be having him on a perspective Checks in the Your Future.

So you'll hear more from Ian next year and I think that's good for announcements.

We left off in the middle of a labyrinth, so let's find our way out of here and play some more Colostle, a little bit of bookkeeping before we jump right back into this labyrinth.

According to the Discord I, and this is something that I should have done very early on, it appears that when you defeat a rook in battle, that allows you to add one to either your exploration or combat scores.

And I wasn't sure if that would allow you to exceed your classes starting scores.

Right.

So for our armed, we have a starting score of three for exploration and four for combat.

According to the discord.

I think that it seems like.

If we got through a Rook combat, no wounds taken, we'd be able to add plus one to those up to a maximum of five for either of them.

You can exceed those starting values and something that I hope to do before the end of this series is use the Advanced Combat Training rules, the optional rules.

And they seem to think that those are really only useful when you have maxed out or you know, you can go above those starting values.

So for the sake of moving forward right now, we've had a little bit of combat.

We've done all these things.

I'm just gonna keep it at three exploration for combat right now.

But if we get into a combat and I get to start adding additional points to our scores, then I will do so and feel more confident because people on the internet said so.

And with that out of the way, let's talk about what happens next.

Sybil is now holding her second unique Rook Stone that she has found out here in the Dungeons, something that it was her life's dream to eventually one day maybe encounter one of these as a Rook Smith.

As somebody who's working with the fallen discarded pieces of rooks in her younger years, maybe she did some little bits of exploring the room lands and things like that, and all you ever found were the three usual, the ice, the lightning, and the rumble, but.

Down here.

It's like doors have opened that it has taken her far too long to find, and though she doesn't know what this new unique Rook Stone does, it's like a weight has been lifted off of her shoulders.

She walks back out to Zorn and the Rooking and just holds it in her hands, reverently.

She very, very.

Carefully wraps this rook stone in some cloth and places it in her pack and looks at them and says, I knew there was something here.

We have to get back to Obli.

We have to find a lapidus to tell me what this does.

What this is.

But I know Zorn, you're searching for a Rooking Forge and I won't abandon you.

She looks at the rooking and says.

I am gonna try and get us out of here.

If you feel that pull, let us know.

We can try and follow your instincts as well.

I owe you both.

I owe you both a lot.

So I'm here.

Let's all get what we want and as they begin.

Walking out of this secret room of the Labyrinth, we are going to backtrack a little bit.

We have two options.

We can just go straight east towards what we, as the player and the audience know as the exit, or we can go back up north in the direction of the NPCs, the clan of keys members that we encountered in this labyrinth.

Maybe we should check on them.

I think that makes sense.

It will bring us back to the entrance we came into, but not the exit that we would probably want.

But let's go ahead and go north here and we get a four of clubs referencing the labyrinth chambers tables A four is a flooded area.

This is one of those exploration.

Combats if you will.

We're going to flip three cards and we're going to use our exploration score to attempt to overcome the flooding in this chamber.

If we can't succeed on this, then this area has been flooded and it is impassable, so let's go ahead and see what the three cards that we have to work with are.

We have a king of diamonds, a three of diamonds, and a four of hearts.

That is not particularly good.

And we are going to try and best a best of three here against this, a nine of clubs we handle with the king of diamonds, a jack of diamonds.

Well, we'll put our three against that and hope for a low card, which we do not get a queen.

We went up against a nine, a jack and a queen.

This flooded area is impassable to us.

We sent an NPC this way, but it appears.

They got through, we can't find them anywhere, and all of a sudden, at least a way we knew out of here is no longer available to us.

So we are stuck having to trek through an unknown path to try and get out of this labyrinth.

We've already dealt with a collapse of a room, which cut off a certain area, and now a flooded section, which makes this area impassable.

So, ooh, I don't know.

Sybil may be messing with bigger things here.

The dungeons are attempting to basically block her in.

This could be bad.

I don't know.

We have to check.

There is, if we don't run into another one of these issues, we can get out.

But if we do, this is gonna be interesting.

So backtracking again, we're going to go all the way back down to the south end.

We flip a five of diamonds.

So the five says, oh, a medium lichen rook.

Okay.

If we beat it, we get to draw an item.

All right.

Well, I think we've hit our combat stride here in the middle of this series.

Let's go up against a lichen rook.

While we're on the subject of probably doing things wrong, but having a good time, and that's all that really matters.

I do think that for these lichen rook battles, I still need to flip some cards to determine certain things about the lichen rook.

So let's flip a card to see if it's an attack or defense type.

This is a six of clubs, which means that it is an attack type rook.

And then we'll flip one card for whether it is ranged or melee, and we get a seven, which is just over the threshold to make it a melee attack based lichen rook.

So this thing is going to attempt to hit us and make us contract more of that rook rot.

I don't know if I'm supposed to flip for rewards for these lichen rooks.

I imagine it's not like the rooks on the surface.

I will flip one just in case, but we are going to get an item.

It says if we.

Defeat it.

So we'll see.

Let's see.

This might be we get an ace, which would be, or I'm sorry.

It is a heart, which is the important thing, and a heart would be another rooking.

Oh, that's interesting.

This could be a.

An interesting development since Zorn is on the hunt for lings.

Hmm.

We were saying that most of the time with these rook husks or anything like that, the lings that live in the center and like the heart of these rooks usually get out in time.

So it's kind of interesting.

We'll see if, if this plays into it.

Alright, we have a combat score of four, so we're going to flip four cards to determine our hand for this combat.

And the lichen Rook has a combat score of three, so we will go up against their three cards.

Our hand is a five of spades, a six of hearts, a five of hearts, and a two of hearts.

Oh no, this could be really bad.

Oh boy.

In the first card four, the lichen rook is a three of spades.

Okay, so we can immediately start this with a critical hit.

However, let's think about how this whole thing.

Manifests as Sybil.

The Rooking and Zorn are backtracking after failing to make it through a flooded passage.

I imagine that after everything in this S labyrinth, their exhaustion is starting to catch up to them, and as they backtrack through these areas and take a turn where they previously had decided to go right and now are heading straight through to unknown areas.

This labyrinth has already shifted and changed quite a bit since they got in here.

Sybil has broken some spectral chains, and I think that this lichen rook is actually just going to full on Kool-Aid, man, burst through a wall and just break it down.

A spade is an unarmed attack and it bashes through this wall, but all of our heroes are able to drop back for a second.

We also have an unarmed attack that we can use to overcome it, and I think that, I kind of love the idea that Sybil, as one of the pieces of these.

Rubble that comes out from the wall as this lichen rook just barrels through.

It is just flying through the air.

Her arm literally catches it and just throws it, and it just hits.

This thing rings.

Its bell square in the face, and I think maybe this is where we see that there's still a rooking inside.

As she throws a piece of rock, a pretty big one, it strains her back with her arm, but she throws it and it breaks open a piece of this.

Rook, the lichen that has grown in and around it has weakened the actual cementing of whatever the stones held together in this rook body have done.

And it bursts open this big piece showing a little bit of the inside.

And for the first time with one of these lichen rooks, we can see just the incredibly dense growth that has just.

Infected and spread through this entire rooks body.

This lichen has grown into every crevice imaginable and is holding it together, puppeting it around like this giant stone death puppet.

As we get a second to real and everybody's, you know, Zorn is pulling out his shield and sword, and the rooking is freezing all of the icicles and sharp spikes that have grown on it and everything like that.

It turns to us and we're gonna flip the second card.

I can't believe it.

It's only gonna draw two cards because we used a critical hit to succeed in the first round of this combat.

And the second card is the Ace of Diamonds, which we can beat with any of our cards.

We have three hearts, which are all magical attacks, which makes me think that maybe this is the rooking, but I did not bring this up.

We've hinted at it with Zorn when infected with Rook Rott.

As long as that rook rot is under control from having drank fresh water and not allowing it to like really gunk up or infect further, you gain a sort of magic from having this lichen symbiotically living among, or, you know, parasitically living in, in this instance Sybil's arm.

When this.

Lichen Rook having just been broken open, and this lichen is now spilling forth from the shattered pieces of its rook stomach where we see overgrown and and nestled in there.

Stuck in there is a tiny little rooking in its core.

It attempts to like pull out a bunch of this lichen and it's just gonna throw it at our party because that way it spreads, this lichen can then infect and take over these other things.

Sybil is going to use her arm.

We'll use our six of hearts just to use the most powerful of the cards available at our disposal.

And her arm begins to glow with its own kind of lichen.

And I think we've decided that her arm is almost like this segmented multi-tool at the end of which is kind of like a socket that she can put different types of heads into for the tool that she needs for the job.

And this lichen has found that it can.

Really press itself into that socket and then shoot a projectile of lichen itself.

And as this medium lichen rook, again size of a car, SUV, right, hauls itself up and starts grabbing at the lichen, spilling out of this broken section of stonework Sybil's arm, almost reflexively not under the control of her.

And we see like a panicked look on her face for a second, as it just takes aim and just fires.

A projectile of lichen that just hits the inside of this thing, creating like this giant puff of, uh, lichen as it just kind of hits and goes right through and it actually breaks a little piece.

And out from this spilling on a soft, kind of like mossy bed of lichen as it falls down in this lichen rook just hits the ground.

Is this inert?

Little rooking that spills from its stomach.

Let's see if it's inert or if it powers up having been freed from this lichen rooks core.

We're gonna consult the yes no oracle, and that is a six of spades, which according to the yes no, Oracle is just a flat yes.

So this little rook link freed from this lichen rooks core hits the ground.

And then all of a sudden wars to life.

Let's go ahead and flip some cards to see what kind of little rooking this is.

So first I'm going to flip on the Rooking Crche table from the original Colostle book because I love this.

It's for whenever you go and you wanna buy a rooking, this tells you basically like what its body type and what it looks, looks like.

I'm gonna flip a card.

The two of diamonds.

Oh my God, I love it.

Oh my God.

It is a ball shaped rooking that rolls around.

Oh, I have like a little BB eight.

Oh, this is great.

Uh, the next card I'm gonna flip is for it's magic type, an eight of spades referring to the create a rook enemy.

Oh, spades says, no magic.

That's so appropriate though.

I think this thing may have lost whatever the original.

Rooks magic is because now it's just lichen.

All right, and we'll flip one more card to see if it is attack or defense body type.

The nine of diamonds is defense, so we have a defensive little lichen ball.

Oh, and there's definitely a joke.

Zorn looks at it as it rolls out, and he says something, something.

A rolling stone gathers no moss, but it does gather lichen.

And Sybil just like backhand, smacks him in the chest and is like cup really right now.

And then she just goes, yay.

Another rooking.

Despite her sarcasm.

In this moment, Zorn is very interested in getting down and investigating this rooking.

Now we said that it does not have any of its innate rooking magic.

But I imagine that it does have the same kind of rook rot, lichen abilities that Zorn and now Sybil have.

Luckily our ICE Rooking has managed to avoid this for the most part.

So we'll see if they continue to do so.

And I'm actually gonna ask a question when Zorn kneels down to not only check on the health and status of this rooking, but to.

Do its minimal kind of conversation and communication with it to ask if it feels any kind of pull to a certain place within these dungeons or anything like that.

I'm gonna ask the Oracle, 'cause I think it'd be interesting here if Lings affected with rook rot have the same pull as lings that don't.

So let's go ahead and see.

That is a jack of hearts, which according to the yes no, Oracle is a no, but there is an upside.

So this Rooking has no idea what Zorn is talking about.

It is, it is just coming.

Back online and back into some kind of conscious sentence.

But when Zorn brings this up and he uses the other ling to demonstrate this, you know, the other, our little ice Rooking friend who we're gonna have two lings again, we're gonna have to, we're getting closer and closer to Sybil, potentially having to name this ling and finally forge that bond.

But this other Rooking wobbles back and forth in a no gesture.

This is a defensive rooking.

We'll figure out how it utilizes its powers.

Its like, and like powers in a bit.

But there's some form of communication where no, it does not feel this pull to the Rooking Forge or destination that Zorn is attempting to find that is pulling all of the wrings of the dungeons away.

That is interesting.

But there is an upside and I'm not sure what that is.

Should we flip on the.

Twist, maybe Oracle.

There's just a Oracle story generator and there's a storytelling twist.

I'm gonna flip one card.

We'll see which of the columns match it the best.

I get a queen of clubs.

The Queen is a chase is the twist.

That does not seem interesting, but there is a storytelling subject that says a unique rook stone, and that plays very well.

With Sybil.

So maybe what is calling to all of these Lings is a unique rook stone, and maybe the lichen cuts them off from it.

That'll be our working theory for the moment as we see what comes next.

I think that Zorn offers to this Rooking that it can join us, and Sybil kind of just sighs and says, Ugh.

Yeah, I mean, what's the alternative, right?

We're gonna leave it here.

Yeah, come on.

We'll find a home for you and the group.

Continue on trying to make their way still out of this labyrinth.

Let's see what the next card is.

Ooh, the jack of Spades.

That is a hazard room.

So it says here, the walls are closing in or a boulder is rolling towards you.

Combat score of one to survive.

We hope to survive.

Geez.

Okay, so we get to flip four cards for our combat score and we are gonna flip one card for the hazard.

We have a 10 of clubs, a queen of hearts, a three of hearts, and a six of diamonds.

So as long as this isn't a king, we survive.

Can you imagine if this is how this ends?

It is a nine of hearts so we can critically succeed with our queen of hearts.

Those are magical.

Now again, the hazard does not need to be magical, but I think it makes sense, right?

Magic in the form of this lichen.

So maybe we came in here guided by the whisper stone around Sybil's neck.

Pulled here for a greater purpose tied to her calling where she found another unique rook stone.

But since we've been traversing.

This labyrinth, we've found both spectral and lichen rooks.

Now we've seen less spectral rooks since Sybil cut those chains.

Now it's like the lichen is coming out more aggressively, and I think that that's what this magic is, is the hazard is some kind of exponential lichen growth that is attempting to smother the room or cut off access through the room as our party makes their way through.

But we're able to overcome it.

Maybe this even is the small rooking ball has some way of like, oh, maybe it, there's actually a term for this.

It's called an exploding diagram or an explosion diagram, or basically it explodes out all of the pieces, the intricate.

Bits that cr make something and it explodes it out.

So you can see how they're all interconnected.

I actually kinda love the idea that this is like a spherical little rooking, except the lichen has gotten into every little nook and groan everywhere it can.

So the magic of its defense is actually that it can like almost explode out into like all of these like thin tendrils of lichen and then create this slightly larger ball of stone around the outside only in certain directions.

So it can kind of make a shield.

And it just kind of pushes out at this lichen and we're able to get through this room.

Cool.

All right, next room.

Can we get through this labyrinth?

The 10 of hearts?

A 10 says there's a statue, A mechanical statue activates as you enter the room and attacks.

Combat score of three.

If you beat it, draw an item.

Oh, we always forget to draw items.

We beat that last.

Lichen Rook.

So I'm gonna just flip the card.

Now I get an ace, which is a mysterious potion that will heal one wound that is convenient.

I'll hold that off to the side.

And now we will fight another statue.

And last time we decided this statue was spectral.

Beneath its stony exterior.

So maybe this one, we're gonna say, this one's lichen.

I like the idea that since Sybil has cut these chains, I think there's almost like a natural immune response from this labyrinth.

And the lichen is what is not taking well to this.

This has a combat score of three, so we're gonna flip our four cards first.

Seven of clubs, four of spades, two of spades, and two of clubs.

That is not a good hand.

However, the clubs do get plus four because of our spectral spear, so we will bump those up.

That makes those pretty decent and now I have to shuffle to see what comes next.

Oh, and I keep forgetting this as well.

We defeated that rook, so we are able to add one to one of our stats.

I'm gonna bump up our combat because I think that we as a group are getting much better at fighting together and knowing what's going to be around any given corner.

So let's flip a card and we get a five of diamonds.

Alright, let's flip for the first card for this rook.

Oh no, the statue.

We get a king of diamonds, so there's no way we beat this.

'cause even our seven plus four will only bring it up to what is effectively a jack.

So I'm gonna use our two of clubs and just take that wound right?

On the chin, and I think that that's going to be, uh, diamonds is a creative attack.

So this statue, I think that because Sybil cut the chains and is ready for this to be a kind of spectral attack again.

It's, she's surprised when instead it is going to like launch out a lichen attack, a surprise lichen attack, and it hits her unexpectedly and I think everyone immediately jumps into motion.

The next card is a 10 of diamonds, so we have to use our seven of clubs, which will beat it with the plus four.

So we are at one out of three.

We are, we need to win this next one.

And we have a four, A two and a five.

So the seven of clubs is bumped up because it is our spectral spear.

So as this thing attempts to do another clever attack and continue the surprise of it being likened, Sybil still has that spectral spear in her hands.

And it doesn't matter if this is a spectral work or not.

This thing is sharp enough and powerful.

To stab right into this thing, and she just kind of gouges a lot of that lichen out of one of the joints.

Our last flip is a six of clubs, which we can tie, we can clash if we use our two of clubs, and that would make it so we have one win, one loss, one draw.

I don't know what that means.

Let's consult the book.

Okay, so this one does say, losing says your opponent lives and you receive no reward.

So any wounds we inflicted on it would still hold.

We take any wounds we take.

This makes sense.

Sybil is.

Basically ambushed by this statue.

And the other three fighters really don't have room to get involved and do anything, and they are struggling to get a hit and all of this stuff.

And, and the last bout of this, Sybil gets a good scrape with her spectral spear.

But as this thing raises its own weapon, they clash and it clangs.

We get that kind of, we see Sybil again.

She's not.

A woman in her prime years.

Unfortunately, she is a little bit older and she is still strong.

But this hit reverberates and we can see just the pain, almost the numbness in her arms.

Maybe she even drops the spear.

And in desperation, I think our rooking friend is going to rush over, scoop up Sybil and the spear and just run out of the room.

And as this statue attempts to leave the room.

Maybe it is a century, maybe it cannot leave.

Or maybe we just need to run, but we are going to take one wound.

I'll just take it right out of that combat score, that bonus that we just did.

We do not consider that a win against the statue.

So no bonuses or anything like that.

No item.

We don't get one for defeating it there 'cause we had to flee and we immediately run into the next room, which is a eight of clubs.

This room says collapsed floor.

How many of these, I think we've had like three of these.

But it does not have any challenges.

It says the floor has fallen, leaving only a thin bridge crossing the abyss.

You know what?

For even more cinematic stuff, we run out of this room.

The statue continues, but the statue is just too large to step on this collapsed floor without it falling away, and our party makes it all of the way across before this thing hesitantly takes a step and it just crumbles away.

We're gonna say that this labyrinth is inaccessible behind us now.

Okay.

And with that we only have a few ways we can go.

Actually, one of those ways is collapsed from the other side from a challenge that we actually failed at the very beginning of this labyrinth.

So let's go ahead and just go towards the exit.

It's the only way we can really go with any future ahead of us that is a queen of diamonds.

The queen says it is a locked door and we need a key to move past this room.

Do we have any keys?

We actually have one key if the labyrinth treasures count, so I'm gonna say it does we'll get rid of our one standard labyrinth treasure key.

I think there's actually like items that are keys from the labyrinth, but we, we do have one key, so I'm going to go ahead and say that that one's good, so we can actually get out of here.

Otherwise, we would legitimately be stuck in here.

We have our waypoint stone, but I'd rather not just.

Play that card and cheese fast, traveling everywhere.

The next card is a king of clubs.

That's our third king in this labyrinth.

The king is an NPC.

There's another adventurer stranded in this labyrinth.

Let's go ahead and see who it is, and I think that this person is actually coming from what we are calling the exit and they're calling the entrance.

So let's go ahead and ask the Oracle, is this person related to the clan of Keys?

People we saw earlier?

The two of diamonds is a no, and it's worse than expected.

So let's go ahead and flip three cards on the NPC generator to see who that could be.

Nine of spades, eight of diamonds, three of spades.

So combining these in the most interesting way for no, and it's worse than you thought is, oh, this is perfect.

This is the kind of NPC that Sybil is not going to enjoy.

This is Pelli.

They are posh and fancy and they are weary of traveling these dungeons.

Oh, it is a spoiled, pampered person down here in the dungeons.

Maybe they're native down here, maybe they are a fellow room lander who has fallen in.

You know what I actually love?

The idea of this is a surface dweller of the room lands posh and fancy, and they are down here as part of an expedition, but it has gone very poorly.

So it is pelli with her two trusty attendants who were supposed to guide her down here in the, so she could find some rare labyrinth treasures and things like this, but they've actually gotten lost.

The prompt does say if you can spare an item to help them out, you can draw an item.

Do we have any items that they may be interested in?

We have that mysterious potion we just grabbed that we could give to her.

Tell her it's gonna lift her spirits, give her some energy.

I think that's fine, and let's go ahead and draw another item.

This is a six, which is just a treasure.

Just a general treasure.

Okay.

One treasure.

That makes sense.

I think that they, she's posh, she's fancy.

We give her this potion and we say, you look exhausted.

Take this.

This'll help you.

We're heading towards the way out.

It's this way.

And we at least get them to a place where hopefully we can split up.

We'll, uh, go our separate ways, but we'll see if that's the case and we'll get one more standard treasure.

Oh, I love this.

Actually, we're heading out towards what we know is the exit and behind us we have collapsed multiple floors.

There is a dangerous statue.

There's all this stuff, and we just find this exhausted, posh woman, Pelli and her attendance, and she's like, I want treasure.

And Sybil just looks at her and just goes.

Well, you don't want to go that way.

Turn around, trust me.

And gives her the civil treatment of just don't mess with me.

I'm in no mood.

Let's see if it works.

I think, uh, does this work And we're gonna just flip an oracle, the ace of clubs.

Yes.

But with a complication.

Well, yeah, with a complication.

She does not like us at all, but we did give her the potion.

So, uh, there's kind of a tension here and I think everyone feels it.

And let's go ahead and flip the very last card for the labyrinth as we find our way to the exit, the seven of diamonds.

A seven of diamonds is a rigged treasure chest.

It says draw a card.

If it's red, the mechanism hurts you and you take a wound.

Then you draw an item.

I love this in front of Pelli.

Let's go ahead and see.

It is the king of spades.

So that is not a rigged treasure chest in the sense that it is going to hurt us, and I think that maybe even.

Sybil points it out and Pelli says, oh, finally I can get something.

And she runs over to do it, and Sybil holds her back and says, watch.

And she uses her spear to push a mechanism of contraption, and it just stabs out like you would've gotten hurt.

Classic, trapped, treasure chest, and then simple smirks and uses her foot to lift the treasure chest.

And she says, you know what?

You can have it, and let's flip to see what the item is.

A queen of clubs, that is a potent potion that will heal two wounds.

Ooh.

Well, lucky Pelli.

We're just giving that away.

And we are now out of this labyrinth, coming out a tunnel, not the one that we entered.

So deeper into the dungeons, further away from Uplit, maybe closer to getting near.

This Rooking Forge that Zorn is searching for Now, just a reminder for the Rooking forges, if you don't find it.

When you go for it.

So we just went for it last session.

Yeah.

It says here that you cannot find one for another three exploration phases.

That means we're at about the 40 minute mark for this episode.

I think we just do a classic, normal, regular exploration phase down here in the dungeons.

Continue getting away from Upli, yet looking for this ling Forge.

We can say narratively that it is just further travel.

We need to.

Travel further.

We know that it was down from where we were.

We know how to get back to roughly the area where we were above it, but what we need to do is descend and continue mapping out these dungeons.

Quick question.

This is gonna be Pelli.

Does Pelli stay with us or do they know their way back to the surface?

And actually, hold on.

That's, that's a very different question because if they know their way back to the surface, does Sybil.

Go.

I don't think she would.

I think she has too much unfinished business down here and she's already discovered things down here that she didn't in her lifetime on the surface.

So I guess the only question we're gonna ask the Oracle is do Pelli and her attendance know a way back to the surface so they can leave and we won't have to deal with them?

That is a 10 of spades, which is a yes with a bonus.

Yes.

They know the way and there's a bonus.

I think that they tell Sybil exactly where it is and exactly roughly where it surfaces and Sybil's Passingly familiar with it.

I think that Sybil can market on her map and maybe even put away point stone marker there for a way back to the surface.

I am going to note that that seems pretty reasonable.

But again, like we said, Sybil's not ready to go back to the surface, oddly enough.

And with that, I think that we part ways with Pelli gone too soon.

Didn't get to know yet, but I have too many NPCs as it is already.

So I think we're going to flip our three cards for our exploration score, and we do have our resonating ring, which will allow us to find a labyrinth every exploration phase.

So I do love the idea that, is it a major labyrinth?

Let's find out.

We're gonna flip a jack of hearts, a seven of hearts and a nine of clubs.

Let's see what those mean in the exploration tables.

The jack of hearts is a medium lichen.

The seven of hearts is a wandering lichen attack, and the nine of clubs is.

A clue to the next step of your quest related to your calling.

Ooh, I like that.

And since we used our resonating ring, I like the idea that maybe we replace this attack with one combat.

It'll be a medium lichen rook and a lichen ally.

Ooh, I kind of like that.

And then we will find ourselves a labyrinth.

So since one of these is about sybil's calling.

I believe that despite Zorn and their mission and civil, trusting the Rooking, the small ice rooking to follow its pull towards this rooking forge, the whisper stone having pulled.

Sybil to this new labyrinth where she just recovered another unique Rook Stone.

I think that there's a little bit of a tension going on with who's leading and which way we're going, because if there's ever a moment where Sybil wants to go a different way than the Rooking, because her Rook Stones are telling her so spectral quest that she has put upon herself, I'm gonna flip.

Some of the story generator oracles to see if we can figure out what this is related to our calling.

We're gonna flip three cards, a three of Diamonds, an Ace and an eight.

So three eight and Ace.

How does this location give us a clue about our calling?

Ooh, I think if we just go in order of the way that we drew them, this actually makes for an incredibly compelling pull.

A three says, destroy an ace, says Ling or Lings.

And the twist is that it will give a clue to an ancient mystery.

Whoa.

We are already dealing with a mystery about why the lings are disappearing.

Zorn is searching for a ling forge where they believe the lings may be heading to being pulled to by potentially a.

Unique Rook Stone down here in the dungeons.

What is this location that's gonna give us a clue about this?

The prompt does say it could be somewhere we were looking for on our quest, but the more specific rules about Rook Link forges say that we can't find one for another three exploration phases.

So I think instead, maybe what this is, is a lot of fallen lings.

And it is a very somber scene to Zorn and the Lings and even Sybil as they come upon it and see just littering the floor of this stretch of the dungeons, or just dozens of small rooking bodies that have been broken and defeated or fallen and seemingly are in perfect condition, but for some reason just do not work here.

And that's when as Zorn and the Lings are looking for information to pay respects or get clues about what's going on, the hair on the back of Sybil's neck rises and she knows something is wrong and she's gonna call out just in time.

It's a trap.

And we're gonna go into our combat against a medium lichen rook and a lichen attack.

Minion the.

Lichen attack that it says here, the wandering lichen attack says that a mobile carnivorous plant or infected animal with a combat score of one.

So I love the idea that this is actually just a vine, maybe of this lichen that starts to slowly detach from the wall and kind of, if you've ever seen those sped up.

Uh, shots of a vine as it kind of circles until it's finding something to grab onto and then connect to and climb.

It's doing something like that, waiting to get close enough to Sybil or the Rooking or Zorn, and she calls out.

That means that we're gonna be up against.

Four cards, three for the medium lichen rook, and one for this plant.

And then we are gonna have our normal combat score of four.

So let's flip our four cards, a six of spades, a four of clubs, a five of clubs, and a five of hearts.

Those are bad cards.

We have a couple clubs, which we will be turning into an eight and a nine, but oh boy.

And then what I'm gonna do here is I'm gonna flip for the one, just lichen vine.

And then I'll flip one for the lichen rook That awakens when Sybil yells out and when we thought it was just gonna be this strange lichen vine.

Turns out it's not.

So we'll have to figure out how we're going to utilize these cards here.

Oh no.

There is a queen of hearts and a three of hearts.

As much as I would love to say that we can critically succeed against the three, which is the lichen rook, I think that it's more.

Likely that the lichen rook that caught us off guard is the queen.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to use our six of spades against the three and call the lichen vine defeated.

And I will use our five of hearts against the queen of hearts and say that we did not expect the magic attack of the lichen rook medium lichen rook springing to life amid this.

Pile and this graveyard of small lings to shoot up.

And we're actually going to use our last use of our little ice lings rooking armor as it is going to take the brunt of this.

And it's just gonna break right off of its shatter like ice around its small body.

And once again, we see the ice ling in its pure form without that ling armor.

And it stands there, but it took the hit for Sybil as she used her arm to pin and slash cut this lichen vine down, cutting it off from the source and rendering that useless.

So now we have to flip two cards for this medium lichen rook against our two cards, which are super not great, a four and a five of clubs.

The next card is an eight of hearts, which we can beat with our five of clubs because we get the plus four from our spectral spear.

So this thing attempts another kind of magical attack.

I love to think that this lichen rook stands up, this hulking stone of a rook, but we are used to these lichens tricks.

Now they don't.

Fight like normal rooks on the surface, and Sybil is not wasting her time preparing for those attacks.

What she does instead is use her spectral spear to just slash at a bunch of lichen that's holding it at the hip or something like that, and it just loses its balance and crumbles and all of a sudden it's holding itself up on one arm and scooting itself forward with one leg.

It's got one card left.

And it is a three of clubs, which we will critically beat with our four of clubs.

We managed to get out of that without taking any wounds.

Thanks to our little Rooking friend tanking a hit for us.

I think Sybil is eventually gonna really have to thank this little rooking, and that means we get to add one to one of our scores.

So I'm gonna bump up our, I did it earlier to bump up our combat because that seems to be what we're succeeding at best.

But I think that.

Sybil is going to use this as, as she rushes forward, and I think that Zorn and Sybil combo using their weapons to just slash at anything at the joints holding this lichen rook together as it falls and crumbles and the lichen is not fast enough to reassemble it.

And we by ourselves, plenty of time.

We don't have a lot of time to look over these lings, but I think that Sybil looks at her small little Ling friend who once again has saved her life.

Saved her a lot of hurt.

And she looks down at it and she says, I'm sorry I was fighting you.

I know you're being pulled.

You're on your own quest.

Let's let you lead for a bit and we are gonna add one to our exploration this time, as we're gonna trust our little Ling friend to lead us towards this Rooking Forge.

So for our next exploration phase, we're gonna have an extra card.

That's awesome.

Oh, and we defeated a rook, which means we get a reward.

But I'm going to just flip a card from my job inventor pack here and say that we salvage.

I'm gonna flip two 'cause it's been a minute and I've probably forgotten one.

And see what we salvage from this.

Like rooking.

Sadly, that's like rooking graveyard.

We get a tripod and a fluid tank.

Those seem pretty interesting.

At some point, I'm gonna have to use these a little bit more.

And get clever.

And now that we've finished that exploration phase, our resonating ring does allow us to find a labyrinth at the end or during any exploration phase.

So I'm going to flip cards for the Oracle and say that.

We see, once again a montage of the Rooking leading us somewhere, but we end up finding ourselves at yet another kind of dead end where they're pointing down further and we can't go down from where we are.

But we do see a strange crack in a wall that leads into parts unknown, and Sybil just smiles and says.

Ah, we've been through worse and we decide to go in.

Is this a major labyrinth?

The ace of spades is a yes with a complication.

Ooh, interesting.

Let's flip a card to see which of the major labyrinths it is and then we can find out what that means for the complication.

A nine of hearts is major labyrinth, number four, castle revolving.

Oh, and I've perfect.

I know exactly what the complication is, which is that we enter this crack and find ourselves as we come out to this strange cave.

And we hear the grinding of stone as it seems to be rotating in front of us.

A wall is just moving across from us, and the complication is, it's not hard to find Castle revolving, but it is hard to find a way in because the walls are always rotating.

We need to flip three cards, and if all three cards are the same color, then we can go inside.

And I only have seven cards left in the deck before I have to reshuffle.

So let's see if as this wall comes to a grinding halt, there is an entrance before us.

King of hearts, four of hearts, uh, Jack of spades.

Which means that we waste a little bit of time going through some rations.

We're gonna have to use another use of our water down to two uses from our labyrinth kit as we share it among all of us to keep that rook rot at bay.

Let's go ahead and, let's just see four more cards.

Six of diamonds, two of hearts.

Oh, don't do it to me again.

Ace of diamonds.

Oh my goodness.

We sit there and we camp for a little bit, taking a bit of a break.

Wow.

I can't believe, I wonder what the.

Probability of that is, but we're sitting there and we see the party taking a break, sitting before this rotating wall, and before long after a short watch and camp and all of this, the walls once again begin grinding and the sound is very loud, but the whole party stands up and waits to see what is going to happen when suddenly, as the wall continues turning.

They realize that it's not just this one section of the wall.

In fact, this time when it rotates, it's not just the wall in front of them.

It's the wall above that and above that and above that, as it looks like an enormous cube just made up of squares, and they begin rotating in various directions all atop one another.

And when they finally stop and dust is falling from the ceiling above the both torch light and glowing light of the lichen from the rook rot that is on both the small little spherical rooking friend that we've just made, but also Sybil's arm and Zorn himself.

There is a castle entrance, a door open to be explored.

Sybil looks down at the rooking and says, do we need to go that way or does anybody else just want to go in like me?

And the rooking nods and Zorn pulls his sword and says, I will follow you into the dark.

And that's where we're gonna end this session.

Nice.

Another major labyrinth, let's go.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for listening.

I hope that you are enjoying Colostle Dungeons, and I know I am just catching on to some rules, things that I did wrong earlier in the series and I did my entire last series, but better late than never, and as long as you're having fun, you're doing it right.

So I hope that you're enjoying it.

If you like what I'm doing, find me online.

You can search pretty much any social media for Rene plays games, or email me at Rene plays games pod@gmail.com.

You can and should join the dms after dark discord where we are constantly nerding it up and having fun conversations, just about games, about life.

Just being friends and sharing pictures of pets and anything you can imagine.

And yeah, I think you know the usual rate and review if you haven't already.

And until next time, be better than Sybil and tell your friends that you appreciate them.