The Baron of Bricks is the tenth episode of season 15, Neverafter.
Intro[]
"Hello, one and all! Welcome back to another thrilling episode of "Dimension 20: Neverafter." I'm your humble Dungeon Master, Brennan Lee Mulligan. With me, as always, are our Intrepid Heroes. Say "hi," Intrepid Heroes.
[...] The last we left off, our friends were in the library of their own stories in The Lines Between, fleeing the sort of coming of the Stepmother, Pinocchio's former patron. With some quick thinking on Pinnochio's part and some quick action on Pib's, Pinocchio found a new patron within the pages of his own story and was able to Eldritch Blast the doorknob, sending the library tumbling into extra-dimensional space. And also, again, on a nat 20 investigation, Pib was able to find everybody's books: The Frog Prince, Pinocchio, Mother Goose, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, and, of course, Puss in Boots himself, in his own book.
[...] We raced through various stories, seeing some of the important memories of these incarnations of these fairytales. We saw Pinocchio's confrontation with his father, Geppetto, in the past that led to the version of Pinocchio we met at the beginning of our story in this campaign. And we went to a confrontation between him and The Fairy with the Turquoise Hair, a very tense confrontation where that fairy heard Pinocchio's requests about the nature of his life, his existence, and didn't really meet it. Met it, I suppose, with some level of understanding, but also some level of frustration at what the fairies were trying to do, and what she, at least, perceived as the stakes of getting it wrong, with the new information you learned about The Authors and the terrible power that they wield.
The fairy was pulled from that place into the story of Little Red Riding Hood, where we saw the horror of Ylfa's memory of what transpired in her warped version of the classic fairytale, wherein she killed and ate The Big Bad Wolf. The fairy communicated, at that point, that the version of The Wolf that had arrived in this version of Ylfa's story was something old and more primordial, one of these sort of multiversal, twice-upon-a-time beasts like The Gander and The Goose, and was, in fact, a force of death itself and the ending of things, a very powerful force within stories: the endings.
Realising that something had sort of captured The Wolf, or that The Wolf had gone missing, the fairy saw the torn-up copy of Cinderella's story from the library and made a leap for it. Gerard beat her to the punch and threw all of you and your companions into the story of The Frog Prince, where we met the other frogs all named Fred, the Princess Elody, and saw how rough it is to sort of live in a pond.
After which, I believe we went into Mother Goose's book, where we saw The Gander in its full form, framed across the sky. [...] Huge, terrifying, but, also, Rosamund and Pib were able to glean that the thing was seemingly in pain to some degree, and that there was some force manifesting behind it to keep it pinned here in the Neverafter.
From there, I believe all of you finally solved the mystery of exactly what the Stepmother is, and who she was before electing to become something that she chose to defy or stand against the forces that had written her story in a way that she could not accept. [...] So you saw the Stepmother, in trying to gain answers to sort of the devastation of her daughters, and, again, having been very cruel to Cinderella, but then realising, in some ways, that that was her destiny, that there was some force moving upon the world that had made her be that. Learning that from the Baba Yaga, she promised a favour to the Baba Yaga, and then gained that knowledge and had that kind of multiversal awakening that all of you had had, as well, upon your deaths. She, however, chose to exit space and time to some degree, and seemed to move within and throughout stories, perhaps ascending to some liminal space, perhaps just ascending to the bowels or hallways of The Lines Between themselves. However, realising that you were rapidly approaching the Stepmother's present, and that she would probably become aware that you were doing the things she had taken great pains to prevent anyone from doing, had erased her own name, which is why that story was scrubbed and erased to begin with. She became aware that people were going, and, indeed, you believe the only reason that remnants of the story were left in this kind of devastated book was because Baba Yaga's memories meant that the story could not be fully erased.
You arrived in the City of Chimneys back in the Neverafter, getting out of there as fast as you could, where you saw some flyers for conscription and compulsory military service for the Baron of Bricks in tandem with the Council of Kings. And, seeing the emblem of the Baron of Bricks there in the City of Chimneys, saw that boar's head and remembered visions of something quite boar-like. And, indeed, with all of the absorbed stories in your book, were able to summon the story of the Three Little Pigs into your book, and have some idea that this creature may have knowledge of the location of The Big Bad Wolf. Upon arriving at the front door, needing to make a good impression, the Baron greeted you. And a huge swing from Rosmaund, Sleeping Beauty, offering marriage, which the Baron accepted."
Content Warnings[]
This episode contains the following content warnings at the given timecodes:
- D&D Typical Violence: (throughout)
- Flashing Video: (0:10-0:54, 1:00:54-1:01:00, 1:01:40-1:01:43)
- Descriptions of bondage, gagging (9:03-9:25)
- Self-Harm/self-mutilation (57:51-58:19)
- Misophonia-gurgling (58:14-59:15, 1:00:12-1:00:48, 1:01:31-1:01:37, 1:27:07-1:27-13, 1:49:31-1:49:40, 1:58:01-1:58:05)
- Misophonia-slurping/chewing (1:37:10-1:37:12, 1:58:25-1:58:29)
- Torture-cooked alive/drowning (58:24-59:05)
- Depictions of Bondage, Muzzling, Being Cooked Alive, Drowing, Harm to Animals (1:00:15-1:57:56)
- Harm to Children (1:08:17-1:57:56)
- Vorarephobia (1:58:24-1:58:49)
Synopsis[]
Locations[]
Characters[]
Players[]
- Prince Gerard of Greenleigh
- Puss in Boots
- Pinocchio
- Mother Timothy Goose
- Ylfa Snorgelsson
- Princess Rosamund du Prix
New[]
Returning[]
Mentioned[]
- George & Charles
- The Council of Kings