Season 3, Episode 9

We know it's been almost four years. We know that 2016 was horrible. We know that the world is a different, scarier place. But Chad and William just so happened to be in the same place at the same time for a couple days, and whaddya know... when two DM's really love eachother, sometimes they make a podcast.

We have received dozens of emails collected over the years, about campaigns that were starting but now probably finished, kids that were born that are now in college, questions that needed answering that by now have probably already been answered. So these emails arrived to our podcast slower than they would have if they'd just be mails.

But these choice, hand-selected emails are new to the podcast, and so with the same fervor, research, jokes, and microphone, we sat down to record the answers to these exemplary questions.

First off, huge thank yous to two listeners who really stepped up their game for this episode's cold open, "The Great Return." ExemplarymDM fan and professional Canadian Trombonist (or a Trombonist Canadian?) Aaron Good wrote it unprompted and emailed it to us back in 2015. Professional voice actor Joshua Bentley recently recorded all three parts. We have been in a state of humble blown-awayism since Aaron emailed the script to us back in November 2015, and we never lost the hope of one day using it.

This is that day.

What does it mean?

You gently wipe your hand across the surface of the old device. There is a faint harmonic whine just inside your range of hearing, and a soft whirring. 

"By Odom's beard, I think this thing works." 

"It's so old, what can it possibly still do?" 

You chuff in frustration, disturbing some dust. 

Then, you see it - faint characters, in an ancient font, lit in ghostly green, dancing in the cross sections of motes. The light defies organization, illuminating wisps of strange characters.

"The dust! Get it into the air!" 

A millennia's worth of dust is stirred airborne, amid your fanning and coughing and sneezing. Thru your watering eyes, like a menacing obelisk, you behold a tower of text in an ancient font.

You arch your neck up to read the first lines, and dig blindly into your pack.

"Put out that torch! Start writing it down!"

"What does it mean?!"