What if I did TAZ fanart for the first time in like 4 years but in my current style...haha just kidding...unless???
Anyway hiiiii Sloane love u miss u 🖤
[ID copied from alt: A drawing of Sloane from The Adventure Zone: Balance, shown from the waist up. She is a slender, brown-skinned half-elf with scars across her nose and lips and long, wavy, blue-black hair that blows in the wind. She is dressed in all black, including a yellow jacket with a feathered ruff and fingerless gloves. In her hands is a black motorcycle helmet with a birdlike beak, which she seems to have just removed. She stands in shadow near a wall and glances behind her, alert, as though having heard something. The sun sets behind a skyscraper in the pink-orange sky behind her. A few pink petals blow around her. End ID.]
It's with a heavy heart that I have to announce the passing of Roli Mosimann.
Roli died at 2:15am this morning in hospital in Wroclaw, Poland, from lung cancer.
Roli was my partner in my project Wiseblood. We released the album Dirtdish, the EP PTTM and the 12" single 'Motorslug' and played live extensively.
I was drawn to working with him after seeing his incredible drum skills in Swans. Roli was also acclaimed for producing the Swiss band Young Gods and working with JoJo Meyer, Faith No More, That Petrol Emotion, Machines of Loving Grace, The The and many others. He was a questing musician and a sonic sculptor. He was also a great guy, and, as his first wife Alexa said, “lover of women, wine and song..”
My heart goes out to his family and those whose lives he touched.
bonus content for those who read the taz: petals to the metal graphic novel and haven’t listened to the podcast arc
so i decided to do another one of these bc I’m procrastinating doing my homework and I like doing shit like this.
basically, under the cut I’m going to be listing a bunch of stuff from the podcast that wasn’t in the graphic novel, or was changed.
this is NOT to say ‘oh i wished they included that’ - it is to say ‘oh look cool bonus content and extra information and context for me, someone who has not listened to the podcast’
It’s not crystal kingdom level, but petals to the metal is still a LONG arc with a lot of stuff in it. of course they had to cut things for time, or condense them, or change them. None of this is in a ‘um actually in the original it was better’ these are just observations of the differences/changes for funsies, and my opinion on them (mostly positive in case you didn’t notice)
(also important: you can be sad something wasn’t in the novel while still understanding why it isn’t and knowing that the final product is still great)
anyway. spoilers for pttm, but I tried not to spoil anything later than that, so people who have only read/listened this far can enjoy
ch. 1
the carnival was the first real lunar interlude, since ‘moonlighting’ is just them getting the job
the costumes are *chef kiss* perfect, although in the podcast taako dresses up as judge lance ito (lanzito? idk how to spell his name but i’m p sure he was the judge in the oj simpson trials???) bc justin saw a guy do it 3 years in a row at a party and thought it was funny.
that change is pretty obvious, taako does ross from friends in the book which gets across the ‘low effort reused costume thrown together at the last minute’ effect just fine
in the podcast carnival basically there’s just a guy with some cans they can’t knock down and they have some beef and that’s the only real game they play. the unicorn double-barrel special is 100% accurate though.
so in the lunar interludes garfield and the gashapon and the leveling all take place on their own before the carnival obvs, but they get all the same stuff and shenan the same shenanigans pretty much.
what IS notable is that in the podcast, this is the first appearance of garfield the deals warlock.
I don’t know how many of you know his dark origin story
but basically he started as a money zone goof on mbmbam and then griffin put him in the game
significantly, at this point he is an entry-level employee, while he’s the boss next time they meet him. in the book he has always and will always be the boss
there is also a functionality which never appears again where you can just name a price and do a contested roll against garfield’s charisma to pay that for something instead of the sticker price and like. magnus does that.
another bit that i’m very glad didn’t make it into the novel is when merle does this roll, he agrees that if garfield wins, he gets merle’s firstborn child.
(this is to buy the ring of recall, which gives you back a spell slot if the spell fails)
garfield wins. but. taako comes over to save the day with the 100$ extra money he has from selling angus’ silverware and helps him buy it.
so
yeah
that
eesh
also while the whole leon interaction is basically the same, leon actually bites the tokens to make sure they’re real, and everyone dunks on griffin bc he said the tokens were brass not gold
the shield in the book that magnus wants does not exist in the podcast. it was a choice b/w the mystery bag and the eyespy, which in the podcast is called the lens of straight creepin’ (this is where magnus rolls to haggle and wins)
the glass ball that stephen lives in is originally described as ‘softball size’ which is WILD
travis was not nearly as psyched about stephen as magnus was. he goes ‘well griffin it feels like when you ask your parents for a dog and they bring home a goldfish to teach you responsibility’ and griffin straight up is like YEAH THAT IS WHATS HAPPENING CAN CONFIRM but he learns to love him ^v^
the eclipse is the same. where the director is during the eclipse changes.
in the book it’s implied she’s been in her office the whole time, but it is never confirmed. we don’t see her at all before then.
in the podcast, we know beforehand she makes an announcement:
Griffin: The Director, you hear her voice amplified over the yard, and she says:
The Director: Attention, everyone. The Eclipse is about to take place, if you would like to join us in the yard, and join us for the viewing of The Eclipse. Uh, it should be here in just a minute or so.
so ‘us’ implies she is in the yard with them
later, afterwards, griffin says
“The— the Director is the first one to sit up and survey the scene.”
so, she was in the yard with them, and was knocked out when The Thing happened. And she recovers the quickest
they immediate run over to her, and this fun dialogue happens
Griffin: She’s a little bit disoriented. She just woke up, and—
Travis: I slap her.
Griffin: She slaps you back.
Director: Booyah.
they go around waking other people up with “healing slaps”
taako uses prestidigitation to turn into the sun from the jimmy dean commercials because “he always makes me feel pretty good.”
there’s a time jump b/w the lunar interlude and ep 1 of pttm
ep1 it opens a fun scene of the boys sparring with Avi, Killian, and Pringles (this is where we start calling him Pringles, too) and then the director calling them to her office to inform them about the gaia sash.
highlights
justin, who has not yet confirmed taako’s sexuality, asks griffin if there’s any babes in the audience watching the fight
griffin, uncomfortable: yeah, i guess there are some women...
justin: yeah, there’s women, but are there any baëbes
griffin, catching on: no less than four beëhbes
the book combines the two director office scenes into one (v smart)
some fun bonus director dialogue
they establish that the bob official handshake is the one from Big, and the director says deadpan, dripping gravitas, ‘shimmy shimmy cocoa puff’ while doing it.
as she’s describing goldcliff and being like ‘surely you must have heard of goldcliff’ and this happens
Taako: We actually have only been to three places
Merle: And they’re no longer there.
Taako: …And most of them aren’t there anymore. [laughter]
she also gives them gorp to eat on their way to goldcliff, and tells them her secret ingredient is pistachios with the shells still on, making it pgorp (or gorpp, as taako puts it)
she tells them that last time on the way down in the ball they hit a bunch of unicorns that were endangered and had to pay fines for it. (this isn’t right they were pegasi)
merle horrifically mispronounces “icosagon” (like, I have it written down as omagobrakasbragsbron) provoking griffin to say: “If any of you can tell me what a 20-sided shape is called I will mail you 200$” (none of them get it. justin guess dodecahedron but that’s 12-sided shape)
ch 2
i will tell you right now - i don’t think merle ever uses dampen elements. but they emphasize that in the book instead of the other ability he gets, destroy undead which is Very useful, so maybe there’s an occasion I’m forgetting
when captain bane is like level 6?? in the podcast he also adds ‘i’m about to send three 6-year-olds into battle???’
merle and captain captain bane have a ‘gruff off’ since merle says he wants the monopoly on gruff voices. taako gives them the phrase ‘taako rules’ merle wins bc apparently clint can sound like the devil when he wants.
i. i cant. with the vines. it’s p much the same as in the podcast but please just listen to that one scene or look up an animatic. i can’t describe it. the only things i will put here:
justin says “Statistically speaking, at least one of our listeners has just discovered that they are in possession of the world’s worst fetish!“
griffin asked for it. he said with his mouth “just talk dirty to these plants.“ and clint did.
even funnier, when all of the boys turned against clint for this, clint shouts “YOU STARTED IT, MCELROY!”
you are all mcelroy. you all started it
the trent the treant fight is a lot longer with many more goofs, but the highlight of it for sure is when magnus chops trent in half, and is pissed off that he’s still alive
Travis: But… I chopped him in half!
Griffin: And he did take some damage for that.
Travis: Yeah, I should hope so!
the elevator scene...so beautiful. wonderfully done. the main difference is in the podcast, they have merle climb the stairs while magnus and taako take the elevator.
he’s almost able to save them, but he says he opens the doors at “the last possible second” bc he wants to be cool and dramatic, so griffin is like “welp. you get sucked in bc you tried to do it at the last possible second”
the other main difference is that in the podcast when taako casts blink shuffle jump, there’s no white eyes in the ethereal plane. he also blinks shuffle jumps earlier in the trent fight with no white eyes. given the knowledge i have as someone who has listened to the entirety of the balance arc at least 11 times, I’m pretty sure this is a “griffin forgot to do it in the podcast but dw we fixed it in the novel” situation. I’ll wager that any time taako visits the ethereal plane in the graphic novels going forwards, the eyes will be there. In fact, I really like seeing it here and him reacting to it.
there’s also a fantastic like, 20 seconds, that I would highly recommend listening to. Here’s the transcript
Griffin: Yeah, you climb the stairs, and, uh, it is, uh… It is an uneventful climb to the 20th floor. And a-
Travis: Floor 20!
Griffin: As- What?
Justin: [giggling]
Travis: [giggling] Floor-twenty!
[5 uninterrupted seconds of silence]
Griffin: [angrily] We’re not gonna say anything better than that, like-
Travis: Griffin we gotta fight some weeds at floor 20.
Griffin: [stunned] We, have... 30 more minutes to go,
Justin: [giggles]
Griffin: And, we’re not gonna say anything better than that.
Clint: [laughs]
Griffin: Did you even think about that?
sloane is pretty much the same - I love her so much
ch 3
the stuff with hurley folds out naturally enough, although sergeant detective strawberry isn’t anything more than a passing joke in the podcast. he’s just there in the book to tell you that silverpoint poison = bad. and occasionally be someone for cpt. cpt. bane to talk to.
merle actually does cast zone of truth in the podcast, and everyone fails their save but him, so hurley tells them all the truth and merle tells some real dumb lies just because he can
later on this leads to this wonderful exchange of taako reassuring hurley about getting sloane back:
Taako: Uh, listen. I know you’re really worried about your friend right now, and I know you don’t know us really well. But let me promise you this.
Justin: Are we out of the zone of truth?
Griffin: Yeah, yeah. You’re far away from it.
Taako: Everything’s gonna be fine.
speaking of, merle is a lot nicer in the books, mostly because clint has the benefit of reflection and time - the funniest improv is not always the most moral improv. He thanks hurley for saving his life in the book and it’s really sweet, meanwhile in the podcast he’s repeatedly suggesting cannibalism or gaslighting a guy into thinking god’s going to kill him with a train. not an exaggeration.
I forget exactly when, but at one point when they’re following hurley somewhere, magnus steals a keychain for absolutely no reason, then gives it back bc he got caught. gotta love it.
ch 4
i love love love the jumpcut of hurley telling them not to kill anyone to them throwing barbara off a cliff
yes, barbara. there’s. just so much of a scene of them getting rid of the 3 gang members guarding the entrance to their lair. they all have different ideas and decide to try them one by one. I can’t fully explain it here please go listen this is when gaslighting a guy into thinking god’s going to kill him with a train happens and it’s the funniest thing ever. (it’s episode 21, pttm pt 4, little over halfway through the episode.) quick overview
merle tries preaching the good word of pan to them but it ends up more like ‘what if you died? right now? what would happen? a train could run through this building right now and then where would you be?’ and he scares a guy with a train sound so bad that he runs off into the night.
important: the guy that runs off is Little Jerry. the guy that stays and does most of the talking is Jerreeeeee. there is also a guy in the security booth.
then magnus comes over and is like hello i would like to join your gang please :)
theres a huge entrance fee though so at first he tries to trade stephen for it but doesn’t expect griffin to say yes and when Jerreeeeee actually agrees he’s like....not this fish. but I got a guy and he can set your whole gang up with fish, i’ll send you his chainlinkedin
eventually he gets Jerreeeeee to go inside and get the boss, then pretends to have something to do and leaves.
taako comes back disguised as Little Jerry (using the spell disguise self). but then the real Little Jerry comes back and taako casts sleep on him like ‘oh no an imposter! we gotta go check on the arcane core!’
and the dumb thing? security booth totally agrees with him. they’re all set to go until security booth’s like ‘wait we should take the fake little jerry and interrogate him’ and taako...doesn’t handle it well.
Taako: [as Little Jerry] When’d you turn in- When’d you go soft? Huh? When’d you go soft?
Ruffian 3: Well no, it’s just like- we need to- gather information-
Taako: [as Little Jerry] When we were growin’ up- we were growin’ up together, in the streets. Out there, in the streets of Goldcliff. Y’know, we- You- were never soft.
Ruffian 3: We met, like, two months-
Taako: [as Little Jerry] You saw- you saw a dead bird, you-
Ruffian 3: We met, like, two months ago!
Taako: [as Little Jerry] You saw a dead bird, you’d step on it. You’d say, ‘I hate birds!’ You were- you had, no heart. Heartless Hank, we called you. Was it Hank? Remind me what your real name is, ‘cause I can only remember the great nicknames I’ve given you over the months.
and security booth gives him an ultimatum - say my real name, right now, or I’ll kill you
and justin says...”It is completely conceivable he would have a nametag. Maybe.”
griffin: in a gang?! in a gang?!?
anyway. griffin lets justin guess. he has him take off his headphones, and tells the other two the name: barbara
justin comes back on and after some dithering says his name is taako “Psych, that’s just mine! Say my name! I cast magic missile.”
and barbara gets killed. and that’s who gets thrown off the cliff at the beginning of ch 4.
ok i s2g that’s the last of that scene it’s just so so so good i needed the world to know
from here on the main differences are that in podcast taako is disguised as lil jerry the whole time and maarvey is a man.
they probably made maarvey a woman to avoid having the only female characters this arc be our beautiful lesbian plant ladies who definitely don’t die - respect
also i appreciate the continuation of the new elfington joke
there’s a whole conversation when Magnus goes to pull the lever and squish the guys where Justin’s like “wait. wait. we were SPECIFICALLY told not to kill anyone” and they argue and decide that magnus should hit it once and then again to stop it, so they just pin the guys in place. they try to do this and griffin’s like “and the guys get squished anyway bc that’s not how any of this works!”
at one point Merle casts calm emotions to try and reason with Klaarg/G’nash. Klaarg resists but the guy he’s holding doesn’t and is very chill while he’s getting choked out and thrown around
also in the podcast they continue the theme of bugbears being like exploited and trafficked and stuff so the hammerheads supposedly “bought” him, glad they cut that shit out.
ch 5
in the podcast it isn’t like. super confirmed that hurley and sloane were dating. not queerbait but not explicit like it in the book.
griffin received some well-deserved criticism about this arc and the ‘bury your gays trope’ and making queer characters explicitly queer and he really took it to heart (he talks about it in a ttazz) so I’m glad to see the effects of that in the gn.
I feel like part of the gn series is like. fixing mistakes/problematic aspects. not in a bad way, not in like a shitty retcon way, but in a nice way that’s like ‘we recognize that we’ve made mistakes and hurt people unintentionally, and we want to show that we’re listening and trying to do better this time around’
that’s one of the things i really like about the mcelroys tbh is their willingness to say ‘we fucked up, how do we fix it’
sorry thats not pttm related ill shut up now
throughout the podcast, the adamant spanner is referred to alternately as “the adamant spanner” or “the arc-light spanner” or sometimes “the adamantium spanner”
p sure it started out as the arc-light spanner and then they forgot what it was called. fun stuff tho
as hurley keeps bring them stuff in boxes, griffin keeps pausing for dramatic effect when describing what’s in them and everyone else keeps cutting him off with other things
ya had to be there but example: “Its a really big…black…metal…” “DILDO” “DAMMIT” (the third time he anticipates it and says “and its dildos and pizza”)
the stone of farspeech call to sloane at the end of the chapter is new. i like it.
griffin mentions that although hurley does have a halfling size safety holster for merle, it’s tight on him bc of how stocky dwarves are, and there’s all sorts of jokes about fantasy spanx and it being very slimming on him while he simmers in rage.
glad they removed this one but the term “fantasy spanx” is hilarious
Hurley is the one who says the mice skeleton thing
in the podcast they choose which animals to look like, so taako like, chooses the mongoose.
the whole “fully realized creation” monologue is 100% accurate and FANTASTICALLY rendered.
hurley makes them based on their request which is nice of her
when describing the montage of the night before the race, he describes it as “This is like a summer vacation montage, not a rocky training montage. Like camp nowhere.”
ch. 6
the race. is. awesome. they kept almost everything from the podcast.
tiny thing: magnus uses railsplitter on the glass of the octopus tank, and the first time it just puts a crack in it, and he’s like ‘it’s glass???? shouldn’t it break???’ and griffin is like ‘it’s THICK glass it has to hold a giant octopus and a bunch of water’ but the second time he gets it.
merle actually gives magnus a buff (bull’s strength) before going into the battle, unusually doing a normal cleric thing.
Griffin: “His eyebrows grow three sizes and move half a foot up his face. He’s got a lot of face”
garyl actually gets got :/ he misses a dex save and is destroyed under the wheels of one of the battlewagons. he and justin assure the audience that as a phantom steed, he cannot die and can be summoned back at any time.
Klaarg/g’nash just. bounces off in the safety harness after the laser thing.
quality quotes
Justin: “Does it look dangerous? Does it look like it’s gonna hurt him”
Griffin: “last night I googled the most dangerous octopus and you know what came up?”
Justin: “It’s a very tense situation”
Griffin: “yeah its almost like I engineered it to be that way”
they spend way longer on hurley and sloane cute bonding moments in the gn and i APPROVE
what happens to the shark tank is. a bit gorier in the podcast. like a guy gets his legs sliced off gorier.
is taako allowed to say think outside the bun?????
they truly perfectly captured the wand of switcheroo moment.
in the podcast there’s some goofs bc when taako does it there’s still like a short amount of race left to do, so they’re all trying to beat each other now that sloane has definitely lost. its all pretty funny but def kind of defuses the tension a bit too much before sloanes big dramatic drive off the cliff.
ch 7
thank you mcelroys for having hurley explicitly say “girlfriend” in the gn. its not like avoided or hidden or anything in the podcast, it’s just less explicitly spelled out for you (for dramatic effect tbh).
goofy ass thing - taako calls himself “weasel-man” in the podcast instead of “man-goose” bc he forgot the highly specific mask he was wearing? or maybe he thought mongoose is a type of weasel?
(i looked it up theyre different species mongoose =/= weasel)
the arcane core getting sucked up into taako’s umbrastaff restoring all his spell slots. the gn is perfect, it’s just that the energy of the scene simply doesn’t translate. I just. I just need to describe it as it is described in the podcast.
basically taako goes to cast fireball again right? and he casts the spell and rolls the damage and griffin goes, “actually, keep rolling. I’ll tell you when you’re done”
and the tension just mounts. with every roll. until
Griffin: The sun basically comes out of the end of your Umbra Staff.
I copy-pasted the transcript bc it simply is such an iconic scene. skip if you want but it’s just *chef kiss*
(happens around 40 min into ep 27, pttm pt 10)
Griffin: Yeah, you point the Umbra Staff at the-- at this towering vine giant and fireball starts to come out of the tip of it but it’s like, really big?
Justin: Uh oh.
Griffin: And-- and it’s not-- it hasn’t like fully come out of it yet, it’s almost like a drop of water that hasn’t really fallen out of the faucet yet, so go ahead and keep rolling those D6s.
Justin: [Snorts] Okay… [rolls] 3 [rolls] 9 [rolls] 11 [rolls] 15 [rolls] 18 [rolls] will you tell me when to stop?
Griffin: The sun basically comes out of the end of your Umbra Staff.
an interesting thing to note. for longtime fans of the show. is that. magnus (who is definitely in the aoe of the spell) does not have to roll and takes no damage. he’s inside the vine monster but so is sloane and she definitely feels that fire. on a first watch this comes off as “this moment is cool enough that griffin decided not to hit magnus with the giant, giant fireball that just happened” and that could 100% be what happened
but if you’ll come into my little theory corner, where there are *SPOILERS FOR ALL OF TAZ BALANCE* i had a thought upon listening to this for the 17th time. taako cannot spellshape. griffin repeatedly tells him that since he switched from being an evocation wizard to being a transmutation wizard, he is no longer able to spellshape (meaning, shape an aoe spell so it only hits who you want it to hit, similar to what happened to magnus here).
So. taako is not spellshaping. that’s something only an evocation wizard is capable of. now who do we know who specializes in evocation and umbrellas? 0.0
just a thought. could be total crack. *END SPOILERS*
ch 8.
every beat of hurley and sloane’s final scene is perfect. no changes made or required.
one short joke right after the tree transformation that was skipped (fairly)
Justin: I notice Magnus reaching for Railsplitter and I say,
Taako: Don’t even think about it!
in the podcast, this is when griffin is still in the “roll a wisdom save against the grand relics to see if they thrall you” era,
taako goes up to get the sash and fails the save, and griffin has hurley and sloane speak into his mind and give him advantage (so they’re still ambiguously probably not dead in the podcast) and he still fails the save
there’s a hilarious, terrifying moment where he lifts it up like he’s about to put it on and the other boys descend on him, merle making the save and magnus holding him back.
i like merle going up to the sash like its a frightened animal in the gn. it’s good.
“I don’t need your help, pal, to have sex with an onion!” is straight from the podcast. they just made it snappier for the gn. love to see it folks.
the gn makes clear at every point possible that they DID not die, and are cool dryad ladies now. originally none of that was intended - in the podcast, while they’re not really dead (see above), they’re certainly not up and walking about anymore.
in a ttazz griffin mentions that he wanted this first epic romance to have a tragic ending, so he intended for the turning into a tree to be the end of hurley and sloane’s story.
but then people told him about the ‘bury your gays’ trope and how it really disappointed taz’s predominantly queer listener base when hurloane seemingly died, and the madlad retconned it and worked hurley and sloane coming back as dryads into the finale. iconic. we love a man who can own his mistakes and work to better himself.
ooh the scene w capt. capt. bane. the deciding not to drink the brandy.
in the gn its very cut and dry. bane asks abt resisting the thrall, and then proposes a toast, and they all say no.
i understand why it was changed 100%. in the podcast, after he proposes the toast to hurley, they all start making tree puns about it, not saying no but not saying yes, and he gets. antsy.
Griffin: He is uh, he is looking at the three of you sort of expectantly, and he looks kind of nervous as he’s holding this drink up.
Captain Bane: Uh, a toast- a toast then. Have you guys ever toasted before?
Merle: Marshmallows…
Magnus: I like toast!
Captain Bane: N-- [sighs] it’s bad luck if you don’t drink after the toast.
and that’s when they decide not to drink.
it just kind of gives more context then “they suddenly decide to not drink”
instead of cpt cpt bane losing it on them and getting physical, in the podcast taako casts charm person on him the second he gets too aggressive about them drinking the brandy.
but griffin says that it feels like taako’s charm person spell is being overpowered by another spell on cpt cpt bane.
and then the red robe goes all ham on the possession and makes cpt cpt bane drink all the brandy n shit
the red robe is like. way more cryptic in the podcast. ik you’re like “wait how is that possible???” but it is.
“are you afraid?...... are you afraid of the dark? ........you do not know how to be afraid”
some real theater kid shit. I like the gn version better, it makes more sense for the overall arc and flows better.
still talks about the hunger of all living things and the past relic users, but doesn’t mention the director.
instead, ends with “This is your first lesson.”
“lessons” never come up in any context ever again. i’m pretty sure a lot of this was griffin being vague and threatening so he can come up with stuff to back it up later, and that is so, so valid.
*minor spoilers*
in the podcast Griffin uses a gendered pronoun* for the red robe right out the gate, as does the director. this is the pronoun the red robe uses for the entire podcast. idk if griffin using the correct pronoun as the director is an assumption on her part of the red robe’s gender/pronouns, griffin just forgetting whether or not the director would know the red robe’s pronouns, or him trying to convey that the director does know the red robe’s pronouns, but just want to put that out there.
i also don’t know if knowing the red robe’s pronouns counts as spoilers. hence the warning
but in the gn when they talk to the director about it they all default to they/them - the spoiler here is that that isn’t the pronoun used by the red robe. you probably could’ve guessed that. hence the ‘minor’
*any pronoun can be gendered, but in this case I’m specifically talking about the difference b/w using they/them as a “neutral” option because you don’t know someone’s pronouns vs knowing the pronouns that someone prefers.
*end minor spoilers*
magnus does try to beat the shit out of an incorporeal being though and it’s exactly as entertaining.
ch 9
i just. this scene is maybe the most different. for the better.
first off, it takes place in the lunar interlude, and it takes place after the relic disposal chamber destruction bit
the director’s whole speech at the end is new, mostly to show off our cool new dryad ladies, v valid, and to drop some VERY big foreshadowing in that last panel!!
merle’s interaction with the director is much more sincere in the gn as well as being much more there.
but there’s just a LOT of lunar interlude stuff that gets skipped in the gn. I don’t think covering it all here would be helpful, just listen to lunar interlude II, it’s one of the best ones. here’s the transcript and the episode
stuff gets skipped for lunar interludes in general. I CANNOT recommend highly enough that even if you don’t listen to the rest of the podcast, you at least listen to the lunar interludes, bc it looks like that’s where they’re cutting out the most meat.
highlights from this lunar interlude (ep 28. Lunar Interlude II - Internal Affairs) include:
voidfish bonding time. so good. so good. a truly iconic, unmissable moment. if nothing else, listen to this.
they have to bring cpt cpt bane’s stuff down for the rites of rememberance (aka johann chucks his life story into the tank so it can get erased while the boys awkwardly try to eulogize about this guy who tried to kill them)
lucas is there and they meet him and hate him instantly. he leaves.
they say hi to the voidfish and it sings to them!
johann is like ‘it usually doesn’t sing like that’
and then magnus puts a hand on the glass and it puts a tentacle back...it’s so beautiful.
pringles has been thrown in the brig :/
the boys get a promotion! new quarters!
angus joins up with the BOB for the first time and the boys say hello to him again (with appropriate bullying)
quality gachapon (goshapon? gawshupon?) antics w leon. they get
defender’s dial - magnus
cloak of the manta ray - taako
physician’s pendant - merle (you will never hear about this magic item again)
first use of the official fantasy costco jingle. within the clutches of the costco...
the first appearance of the Flaming Raging Poisoning Sword of Doom.
magnus gets the Shield of Heroic Memories and the Glutton’s fork (which is never used in the gn for good reason) but has to sell back his old shield signed in blood to afford them
merle gets the nitpicker, the phone-a-friend scrying bones, and a rusty can of cheerwine which he drinks, raising his max hp by 5 points.
taako gets the immovable rod, the plastic sheriff’s badge, and the anti-gravity sphere, and trades back the gustmaster 5000. this will be a minor plot hole later.
some of this bleeds into the beginning of crystal kingdom but no major spoilers.
plus, i wanted to make a list of things that are different so the boys don’t get sued by wizards of the coast (the dnd people). it’s mostly spell names, but also klaarg is actually in the lost mines of phandelver, the box campaign that the first arc started out as.
anyway here’s all the ones I noticed at least. formatted like: gn name = dnd name
UPDATE: made a more comprehensive post
g’nash = klaarg
haverdale = phandalin
shuffle jump = blink
dampen elements = absorb elements
blast of fire = scorching ray
magic rope = rope trick
sleepy-time = sleep
clair-vision = clairvoyance
diminish size = reduce
the spell is enlarge/reduce, and later on they use “enlarge” with no trouble - why is it “diminish size” here???
spirit steed = phantom steed
ethereal weapon = spiritual weapon
gout of flames = fireball
blessings of the cherubim = prayer of healing
concussive force = concussive blast(?)
Taako just magic missiles the boar in the podcast
they probably wanted to spice things up a bit since magic missile kind of has a Brand.
Concussive blast is a real 3rd level evocation spell that taako would’ve been able to cast, it just doesn’t actually happenin the podcast
levitate is still levitate
how is that one ok but “sleep” has to be “sleepy-time”??
zone of truth is still zone of truth, idk how they got away with that one
destroy undead is a toughie
it’s technically not a spell, it’s a use of channel divinity, at while at first it’s called turn undead, when you reach level 5 you get to automatically destroy any low-level undead (each time you level up you can destroy one level up of undead), so the ability is called destroy undead from that point onward, but you still do the turning bit too.
it doesn’t say the name, but on pg 123 taako casts “crown of madness” on the gerbil guy, which is a Horrifying spell
the crickets cast “dominate person” to control taako in case anyone’s interested.
welp that oughta be enough bonus content for 18 years. we’ll see if I get a job this summer before writing the next one lol
