Pieces of a King Ep 4 - The Warmind

Champions and players	Mudcat as Grimnar Stormclaw; QR0WNTV as Nehebka; JustSeum as Muffy
Result	n/a. The party defeats the Shadow Knights without killing them, takes the remnant and leaves for Umbracor.
Arena	none (not a Deathmatch). Locations are an Order of Shadow chamber in “the realm of cold light”, a burrowing “bullet” transport, a flashback battlefield, the 34th Deep Divers’ tunnels, and the Warmind’s chamber on Damerung (spelling uncertain).
Hosts	KyleCalrissian
Watch	YouTube

What happens

Cold open: the Order of Shadow

1. 0:00:43 The scene opens in “the realm of cold light”, in an antechamber. Two knights in polished armor of dark grays and deep blues wait there:

   • Glauccous, a human male with neck-length dark hair and soft features.
   • Taupe, a tiefling with ash-gray skin and ink-black hair.

   Taupe admits she is “nervous, but excited about this prospect.” Glauccous grins: “Never better.”

2. 0:01:15 The door opens into a large circular room. It is lined with bookshelves and paintings of “bygone figures from previous ages”, and holds ceremonial armor and weapons “from realms too alien or bizarre to really fit into human hands.” Lit candles bring “an alien warmth to this world of eternal twilight.” A voice says, “Enter.”

3. 0:01:47 The knights kneel before a man who is gazing out over a city below. He thanks “Knight Glauccous, Knight Taupe” for answering his summons and tells them to rise: “There’s no need for that here.”

4. 0:01:54 The mission.

   • He says: “We found another echo, a remnant of the Shadow King on the world of Dameron. I would ask that you both venture there and retrieve it.” Both knights tense up.
   • Glauccous asks whether there have been “ripples from the Dread Fortress.” The man says they will very likely meet “the forces of Grandmaster Skypiercer.”
   • His orders: “offer them our peace, but do not allow them to take the remnant.”
   • The knights answer “By your command, Grandmaster.” So this man is a Grandmaster. He is inferred to be Grandmaster Payne, who is named later.

5. 0:02:51 Once they leave, his smile fades. At his desk lies an open tome with a portrait of the Shadow King Agdrel. He says: “Was this your dream, Shadow King? To live, even in death. What parts of you remain to plague the void even now? And what price will we pay for your folly?”

The bullet

6. 0:03:50 The party rides inside “a bullet”, a modified living creature: a large, smooth, carapaced digger with big digging arms and a canopy fitted for passengers.
   • It burrows through a vast tunnel network. The air is warm and stale, and the party is covered in dirt, rime and blood.
   • Two Nightingales sit opposite, also battered. One has a crack through the center of its mask; the other’s coat is scorched and punctured.
   • The warhead gives off a faint blue glow.
7. 0:04:46 The physician reports that the RBA is launching its counteroffensive “following the attack on the solar.” “This next part of the operation rests firmly within our hands.”
   • Grimnar asks how long until they are in range. “A matter of moments.”
8. 0:05:35 Nehebka sits in a meditative state. “They say healing, but she took no damage. They say rest, but she does not sleep.”

Flashback: the Titans

9. 0:06:07 In her meditation the story returns to the earlier battle.
   • Titans stride in, leaving craters with each step and towing waves of infantry and cannons.
   • RBA stone guard, drow elites and hobgoblin commandos rush to meet them amid bolts of magic, repeating bolt rifles and detonations.
10. 0:07:14 Trissavin falls. Trissavin stands face to face with a Titan. A cannon discharges with a red flash, and her body flies about 20 feet and lands by Nehebka.
11. 0:08:08 Nehebka’s view of death. Where she comes from, “everyone has been assigned and or created for one purpose, and that is the protection and adoration of the god-king that they serve.” Sadness “just does not compute.”
12. 0:09:42 Nehebka saves Trissavin.
    • Nehebka rolls a natural 20 on medicine. Trissavin took the full brunt but is alive, perhaps through a last-minute shield or a miracle. She “will not die in this battle,” though she will soon be unconscious.
    • Trissavin pleads: “Please, please finish this for us. We can only do so much.”
    • Nehebka splays a hand, and her sand props Trissavin up so her airway stays clear. “We will do this with or without you. But I hope someone hears a prayer for you and that you survive this.”
    • Trissavin: “Nehebka, you will be honored here indefinitely.” Nehebka: “I do not care for your honor, nor do I care for your mortal debts.”
13. 0:11:43 Muffy takes command.
    • A squad calls Muffy over. It is a mix of kuo-toa (“Kuwatoa”), bugbears and hobgoblins facing ten Warforged.
    • Muffy conducts the squad with her paintbrush like a maestro. She uses no paint. Instead she draws battle plans in the air out of the cool, dense air itself, with little swirling clouds, X’s and arrows.
    • The inexperienced squad rallies and the line holds. A soldier says: “you’re going to be a hero. Hey, you’re going to be our new mascot.” Muffy: “Yes.”
14. 0:15:39 Muffy kills a Titan.
    • Heavy guns and battle mages topple a Titan. As it rises, a soldier shouts “finish it.”
    • Under the grime it has a glowing red eye and a humanoid head and jaw, and it groans and mumbles.
    • Muffy paints a rainbow in which each band is a different damage type, adds little clouds at the end, and pushes it forward.
    • The rainbow overloads the Titan’s optics and brain stem. Fire erupts from its eyes and it crumples. The troops chant “Muffy! Muffy! Muffy!”
15. 0:18:15 Grimnar kills the last Titan.
    • This is the Titan that shot Trissavin. A hobgoblin commando throws Grimnar a grapple: “we’re going to have to climb it.”
    • Grimnar: “I will meet you at the top.” He starts to float “like Magneto” on electromagnetic lightning. Then he fails his athletics check and falls on his face (“Oh, Gnar”).
    • Smoke canisters go off and the squad charges while Grimnar lags behind in the fog. He scales a lifting leg, but infantry below shoot him: “you are a massive white polar bear.” Several climbing goblins are shot down.
    • At the top, the hobgoblins fight two Warforged co-pilots. The leader tells him: “you got to take down the neck.” Moments later a Warforged throws that hobgoblin off the Titan. Grimnar: “Can’t really worry about that guy… We’re in the middle of a war.”
    • His eyes go black, chaos lightning surrounds him, and he leaps to the neck in a superhero landing. He is struck by bolt after bolt until the metal under his feet turns white-hot. The ammo stores on the shoulders explode, and the head shears off and plummets.
    • He rides it down and leaps clear in a tuck and roll (“Dark Souls”) as it explodes. Duergar (“Dwargar”), drow and goblins cheer his hero pose.
    • Grimnar: “There is still a weapon to deliver, is there not?”
    • Nehebka: “While we still are here.” The party leaves.
16. 0:25:25 Back in the bullet, the physician and Nightingales have healed them. Had they not intervened, “that site would have been lost” and casualties would have been far higher.

Priming the warhead

18. 0:26:33 The bullet stops: “We’re here. Please exit.”
    • The warhead sits in a contained cylinder with celestial energy flowing around it and a small rune keypad. The physician primes it.
    • Once armed, they will have “a good solid minute” to get back to the bullet. The Nightingales will guard the transport, and the physician will come along: “I want to see this through to the end.”
19. 0:27:41 Insight on the physician (a 31; who rolled is unclear). Both motives are true:
    • He wants the Warmind, which he helped create and which caused so much death, destroyed.
    • From scientific curiosity or morbid fascination, he also wants to see the result of “harnessing a celestial being’s power for a weapon,” his magnum opus.
    • He does intend to help. “You all are not a literal suicide squad.”
20. 0:30:00 Nehebka questions him. She asks whether being unable to escape concerns him. “Our lives are my concern… Everyone’s.”
    • Sand forms between the three party members: “Our lives aren’t your concern.”
    • He replies: “I would wish for the three of you to return triumphant heroes… I’m not going to simply have you take out the trash and do the dishes.”
    • Nehebka: “These idioms do not mean much to me.”
    • He offers to stay with the bomb if time runs short.
21. 0:32:13 Grimnar: “it doesn’t matter how many times you tell me this guy’s on the up and up, I’m never going to believe it.”
22. 0:32:26 Static pops around Nehebka. She tells Grimnar: “Do not be afraid to use your full elemental force. If I am near, it will not harm me. In fact, it might do quite the opposite.”
    • Grimnar: “I have no intention of holding back… For it is chaos that flows through me.”
    • Nehebka: “Chaos.” Muffy: “Chaos.” Somewhere in the distance, the 34th Deep Divers all snap their heads toward the word.
23. 0:34:18 “Why chaos?”
    • The physician asks: “Here, you’ve seen what chaos has done. Why do you align yourself with it?”
    • Grimnar: “What has chaos done? All I have seen here is that what you have done.”
    • The physician concedes: “Well, can’t argue with that. All right. Facts be facts, I guess.”

The trail of corpses

24. 0:35:23 They reach a blast door bearing RBA iconography and the insignia of the 34th Deep Divers, whose tunnels reached all the way to the Warmind’s mountain.
25. 0:36:23 What lies beyond. Muffy rolls a natural 20 on perception.
    • There are Warforged corpses everywhere, but not a single RBA body.
    • Some cuts are perfectly clean, “as if something went through them like butter.”
    • Some bodies are brittle and pale from a rapid temperature shift.
    • Others show heat-warping from lightning.
26. 0:38:42 The two visitors.
    • The physician: “we don’t fight like this. There’s somebody else here.”
    • Grimnar suggests “the other two visitors.” The physician explains that two strangers spoke to Trissavin about needing “some artifact of power.” They were promised it if they helped defeat the Warmind, but they never accepted aid and “just trundled off. I honestly considered them dead.”
    • Nehebka says the sounds in her visions told her that some had walked these lands searching for the same thing.
27. 0:40:44 The Dread Fortress isn’t everything.
    • Nehebka: “the Dread Fortress is not the ultimate power in the multiversal space.”
    • The physician: “A curious statement from one that bears their markings.” Nehebka: “That I do.”
    • QR0WNTV explains that she isn’t anti-Dread Fortress; she has simply seen more than it.
    • On his own fighting skills, the physician says: “I am more than adept at breaking apart the minds of my opponents as I break apart their bodies in tow.”
28. 0:42:27 Five or ten minutes deeper, the physician stops near the main chamber to fully arm the warhead. Nehebka would rather they all go in together.

Ambush in the tunnel

29. 0:43:40 Through tremorsense, Nehebka hears metallic limbs in a side tunnel.
    • One is large, nearly as bulky as Grimnar. It has scimitar-blade fingers, gorilla-like forearms, a barreled chest of segmented plates, and a “plumed” helmet made of a fan of serrated blades.
    • Six lithe Warforged follow it.
30. 0:44:38 / 0:46:53 Nehebka takes the shot for Grimnar. A bolt is about to strike Grimnar’s arm, and Nehebka spots the arm raising down the hallway.
    • Sand surrounds both their feet and her body passes straight through his as they switch places. The bolts pierce her arm up to her pectoral and pass out the other side.
    • She shimmies, sand flies everywhere, and she barely winces: “You should keep your wits about you, Grimnar.”
31. 0:45:48 The physician: “Well, this simply won’t do. The warhead is ready. Go. Go to the warmind, and I will handle this.”
32. 0:48:40 Grimnar copies a resistance. Through the electricity connecting them, Grimnar uses his mimicry ability on the bladed Warforged to take one of its traits. Offered necrotic or poison resistance, he flips a coin and gets necrotic.
33. 0:50:10 The physician’s weapons. Unseen force fans the dust outward and lifts rocks around him. He draws a misericorde from his coat (“misery chord”), and with hand signs and arcane runes a teal-blue light blade shimmers out of his fingers. “I’ll see you all very soon.” He charges.

The door of tainted chaos

34. 0:52:50 A large circular door is flanked by plinths, and circuitry runs outward from it. A magenta glow and a faint migraine-like pressure fill the area.
35. 0:53:49 Grimnar reads the chaos.
    • Arcana: chaos is “oozing from this room,” forming a thick miasma that the circuits drag outward.
    • Religion (rerolled with a sorcery point): this is not the chaos he feels outside, at the Fortress, or in “the planar veins on the way to Damerung.” It is “a choked and clogged river,” warped and distorted. “There is something pure and black at its center.”
    • Grimnar: “We must be careful. There is a deep chaos presence here, but it is tainted in some way.” Nehebka: “Are we not always careful?”

The Warmind’s chamber

36. 0:57:55 The Warmind. It is a massive illithid-like skull with tentacles spilling out, sitting among channels of magenta fluid, vaulted ceilings and geometric pillars. Warforged corpses lie everywhere and the room has an acrid, amniotic stench.
    • Glauccous climbs down from the skull, cleaning his sword with his cape: “that should handle things here, Taupe… Just gotta extract that remnant.”
    • Taupe: “we have to dig it out of the brain.”
37. 0:59:41 The party fails stealth. Muffy: “Yoo-hoo, we’re right here.”
    • Taupe: “oh shit.” Glauccous stands beside her, sword drawn but not attacking: “you all don’t look metal and you don’t look like RBA. So I’m going to make a guess here. Dread Fortress.”
    • Grimnar is “literally dressed in the skull of the Dread Fortress as a belt buckle.”
    • They introduce themselves as “Antumbran Glauccous” and “Antumbran Taupe”, apparently a rank or title (spelling uncertain).
38. 1:00:51 Meir.
    • Glauccous squints at Muffy: “Meir?” Muffy: “Oh, you must be talking about my brother… Great artist.”
    • Taupe agrees: “he’s a exquisite artist… One of our allies. I can see the resemblance.”
    • They saw him “a couple days ago. He speaks about you a lot.” He’s “small guy… gotten a bit bigger now,” and works in paint and mixed media.
    • Muffy: “But he died a while ago. I even have his paintbrush.”
    • Taupe: “I think he might be your Meir.” Muffy turns away for a moment.
39. 1:02:44 Grimnar proposes they need not quarrel. Glauccous doesn’t want to fight either, “considering we just fought through all of that.” He explains: “Our job as Antumbran’s is, uh, we need to extract the remnant from this here giant brain. It was a hell of a thing to put down, but goddamn, we did it.”
    • The Warmind “ended up having a piece or a remnant of the uh shadow king stuck in his brain and it’s caused all of this mess.”
    • Their duty “as… Knights of the Order of Shadow” is “to retrieve it and put it safely away so that it can’t cause harm to the people of the Void any longer.”
40. 1:04:48 What the party knows of the Shadow Knights (investigation, from books at the Dread Fortress):
    • The Shadow Knights were once called Dragon Knights. After the defeat of Agdrel the Shadow, the organization changed.
    • There were occasional sightings, and Void Knights reported activity linked to the Shadow King or “this shadow cult.” The order was never pinned down.
    • The gray and blue armor matches, but these knights don’t behave like the Shadow Knights in the books.
41. 1:06:18 Two Grandmasters.
    • Grimnar: “the Shadow King is gone. Dead, some would say. Many we saw him defeated by the Arbiter. So, tell me, who is it that you are fighting for?”
    • Glauccous: “We serve the Grandmaster. We don’t serve the Shadow King. The Shadow King is dead.”
    • Grimnar: “you can’t serve the Grandmaster because we are serving the Grandmaster.” Glauccous: “We do not serve Grandmaster Skypiercer. No, we serve our Grandmaster.”
    • Grimnar and Muffy: “There is only one Grandmaster.” Taupe shrugs: “well, there are currently two… The Grandmaster of Shadow.”
42. 1:07:28 What their Grandmaster wants.
    • Taupe: “He wants peace. These things, these remnants, are plaguing the Void… Our goal is to gather them and contain them in one place, back where they belong, back in our monastery, our fortress.”
    • Glauccous has orders to offer peace. “Our Grandmaster does not wish for violence between both orders… he would prefer to have an open dialogue with Grandmaster Skypiercer.” But no one else may have the remnant.
    • Taupe: “Would you like to come with us?”
43. 1:09:48 Impasse.
    • Grimnar counters: give us the remnant and come to the Dread Fortress for that dialogue. Glauccous: “The Grandmaster gives explicit direction.”
    • Nehebka: “our fortress has given us ours, so it seems that we are at an impasse.”
    • Glauccous: “You could just let us go. Without the remnant.” Muffy: “Yeah, the remnant is ours.”
44. 1:10:43 Glauccous draws. He holds out a cool black blade trailing smoke: “Please do not make me do this. I would rather you be able to meet Maier alive.”
    • Nehebka looks at her own sand-wreathed scimitar: “If you would like to fight, that is your prerogative. But understand, you make threats that you cannot keep.”
    • Glauccous suggests “Rock, paper, scissors,” then tells Muffy “You are very like him.” Muffy: “Stop that.”
    • Glauccous makes the full offer. They need not renounce allegiance; others have offered the same to Void Knights before. “Come with us to Umbracor and you can meet our Grandmaster.”
    • Nehebka can’t be bothered: she has seen many in her realm make such “offers” with weapons drawn, “and they all have died.”
45. 1:13:17 Grimnar: “our orders are from the highest authority in the void. So it does seem like we must let chaos decide.”
    • Glauccous: “Always with chaos.” He raises his sword in salute, and Taupe raises a stave with arcane force building around it.
    • Glauccous: “if we must, then as a Knight of the Shadows, I will have to stop you.” Muffy: “Well, good luck.”
46. 1:15:48 Break (cut). On return, Kyle calls the knights “two knights belonging to the Order of Ascendant Shadows.”

The fight with the Shadow Knights

47. 1:16:24 Grimnar opens (natural 20 initiative). His reasoning: “They’re asking me to commit treason… in the first five minutes of knowing him.”
    • He twin-casts a psychic lance on both knights. Taupe rolls a natural 1 on the save; Glauccous fails too.
    • Flavor: he kneels, drags his hands across the floor (“nothing personal”), and sends two walls of lightning up their bodies to “fry their brains.”
    • Both are badly hurt and incapacitated, twitching with aftershocks. Glauccous desperately grips his sword.
48. 1:20:05 Muffy’s first turn.
    • She dashes in. Taupe tries to mouth “We don’t have to fight like this.” Muffy: “But I want to!”
    • Her paintbrush’s bristles become fine threads that pierce like quills. She rages and stabs Taupe twice.
    • Taupe, gritting her teeth: “this isn’t what he’d want.” Muffy: “Sorry, I can’t hear you,” and plugs her ears.
49. 1:23:16 Nehebka’s first turn.
    • She takes sand form: her lower body becomes a tornado.
    • Insight (21): she sees genuine care between the two knights and recognizes them as mirrors of her own party. Their missions conflict, though, and they refused Grimnar’s counteroffer, which “she won’t forgive.”
    • She chooses not to attack the helpless knights, and waits.
50. 1:27:19 Glauccous pleads (still incapacitated).
    • Glauccous: “Is this the way of the Dread Fortress? Violence over peace?”
    • Nehebka: “The way of the Dread Fortress is chaos, and you have chosen it.”
    • Next, “We stand for order in the madness of the Void” (speaker uncertain; probably Glauccous).
    • Glauccous: “You live here, don’t you? You serve her. Do you even know what happens here in the void? Do you know what these people go through? You choose chaos.”
    • Nehebka: “Is this your attempt at attempting to sow empathy upon my farm?” Glauccous smirks: “Do you even have the capacity for empathy?”
    • Nehebka: “Not unless the God King commands it.” QR0WNTV notes: “she did not say the Grandmaster.”
51. 1:29:22 Taupe and Muffy.
    • Taupe: “Your brother, Myer, is one of us, and he misses you. He’s not here, but if you surrender and come with us, we can show him to you.” Muffy: “I can’t read your lips! Sorry.”
    • Taupe, under her breath: “I don’t want to die here.”
    • Muffy drops her hands: “Where would you like to die?” She is genuinely curious. Kyle: “Muffy is the most cold-blooded.”
    • Taupe smirks through the pain: “preferably on a beach with a drink.”
52. 1:31:59 Grimnar goes for the remnant.
    • The Warmind isn’t moving, so the remnant must be dug out of the brain mass. Grimnar dashes for it: “You hold them off and I will go for the remnant.”
    • Kyle: “Imagine him sprinting is very like… This is very big.”
53. 1:35:00 Muffy chokes Taupe out.
    • The knights recover their reactions. Muffy grapples Taupe pro-wrestler style, getting under her arms and throwing her down into a headlock. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”
    • She goes for a non-lethal knockout “so that it’s, you know, she’s not getting hurt anymore,” whispering “It’ll stop hurting when you go to sleep.”
    • She uses action surge. Taupe’s eyes roll back, she goes slack, and she falls unconscious. Muffy pats her cheek to check.
54. 1:40:13 Muffy and Glauccous.
    • Muffy lunges at Glauccous, but he repels her “like a bull off the cape.”
    • Glauccous: “What’d you do to her?” Muffy: “I put her to sleep.… I’m sorry, mom.”
    • Glauccous: “We don’t have to do this… I can’t fail here the same way that neither of you can fail here.” Muffy: “This can be the same both ways. It’s your choice though.”
    • Her persuasion fails. Glauccous: “If we’re going to stop chaos, I have to make sure that order prevails.” Muffy: “Well, we’re not stopping chaos. All right, Nehebka, he’s yours.”
55. 1:42:44 Glauccous explains his cause.
    • Nehebka: “So that’s what you wanted to do. You wanted to stop chaos.”
    • Glauccous: “And bring peace to the Void. No more senseless violence. [No] more people pulled out of their homes for sport, for entertainment. The Shadow King is dead. He failed. Where he failed, we can prevail and do something better.”
    • Nehebka: “That’s just one problem with what you want. It’s not what I want.”
56. 1:44:39 The Warmind is near death. Its eyes are cold and empty, and the only light comes from the remnant in its head. It is “on death’s door… The remnant is the only thing that’s actually still keeping it fully alive.”
57. 1:45:15 Nehebka charms Glauccous.
    • She smiles, puts a finger under his chin: “I told you though, I do not need to kill you. We will get what we want.”
    • Her finger turns to sand, crawls over his face, peels back his mouth and forces its way inside him. She casts Charm Person (Kyle had removed the drow Fey Ancestry from his stat block). Glauccous fails the save.
    • The sand infuses with his blood and nervous system. His pupils dilate, then relax, his grip loosens, and his heart rate slows.
    • “He is one with the sand and the sand wants that peace and to come back to the Dread Fortress.” His objective is to get the remnant and come back to the Dread Fortress.
58. 1:50:18 Charmed Glauccous helps.
    • He dashes to the Warmind, treating them as friends: “So after we get this thing out of here, uh, what do you want to do next? Grab drinks?”
    • Grimnar is baffled: “What the? Is, is he on our, are you on our team now?” Now and then sand tendrils show around Glauccous’s mouth, likened to The Last of Us cordyceps.
    • Grimnar: “maybe you just tell us a little bit more about your Grandmaster. Would you boost me up here, please?” Glauccous does.
59. 1:52:51 Behind the door, the physician’s battle rages on: he hasn’t lost, but it’s giving him “a run for his money.” With Taupe asleep and Glauccous charmed, the party leaves initiative. Kyle: “you’ve solved my Shadow Knight puzzle… achievement unlocked.”

Digging out the remnant; Grandmaster Payne

60. 1:54:34 The brain soup.
    • The brain is hot “brain soup.” The deeper Grimnar reaches, the more a static, pins-and-needles numbness spreads up his forearms.
    • Wary, Grimnar has Glauccous take over. Glauccous: “it’s pretty gross. But you get used to it after the first time.… We’ve got a couple of remnants back at Umbracor.”
61. 1:56:16 The remnants.
    • Glauccous: “We’re planning to take them from the Void so that they can’t do stuff like this… We’re locking them away. That’s our job… They’re parts of the Shadow King.”
    • Why them? “Because we’re what remains of the Shadow King’s forces? I mean, we have the books, we have the materials. This has been our goal from day one. Gather the remnants. Bring peace to the Void.”
    • Grimnar: wasn’t the Shadow King the one who brought disorder in the first place? “He’s dead, and that’s why we don’t follow him anymore.” A change of heart after his death? “That’s something you’d have to ask the Grandmaster about.”
62. 1:57:40 Grandmaster Payne. Glauccous describes his leader:
    • “I don’t know, I just work for the guy. Pretty cool, though… Not really big on formality.”
    • “Grandmaster Pain[e] has been sort of like a father to us all. We’re all from the periphery… out there it’s pretty lawless. Not many Void Knights come walking through trying to keep the peace.”
    • “He’s got a vision… When he talks, you just, you sort of get it. He just wants us all to not have to live in fear, not to be afraid of the dark. I think you’d like him.”
    • Grimnar: “I’d have to meet him first… Are you there yet?” Glauccous: “oh, sorry, got distracted.”
63. 1:59:20 Taupe’s belongings. Taupe is unconscious but stable. She carries a staff and wears simple finery and robes.
    • Her brooch: an obsidian crown resting atop a shield, decorated with sapphire and silver. It is her order insignia.
    • Muffy offers Nehebka something to eat (“I worked up quite an appetite. Would you like one?”). Nehebka: “No.” (The item isn’t named.)
    • Nehebka searches Taupe for anything important. She isn’t stealing; she is doing her job.
64. 2:02:26 The containment cylinder. On Taupe’s belt is a cylinder with two brass knobs, ringed with sigils.
    • Arcana (23): each ring is its own inlaid protective ward. It is built to contain remnants for safe transport, and can hold and dispel any magical thing that fits.
    • It is the highest-caliber artifice she has seen, something that “would maybe be in the Arbiter’s collection.”
    • Nehebka understands magic but not artifice (“not really what they did back in Hardicure”). A sandy hand floats it to Grimnar: “This could contain the remnant.”
    • Grimnar to Glauccous: “Why didn’t you mention this earlier?” Glauccous: “You didn’t ask. You just told me to dig.” Grimnar jiggles a chunk of brain in his other hand.
65. 2:07:02 Grimnar touches the remnant. “Let me do this part. I want to learn.” He fails his wisdom save even after a sorcery-point reroll.
    • His vision fades and static overtakes his body, but the cylinder keeps him from falling under the remnant’s sway. Without it, touching the remnant would have been “like being blackout drunk.”
    • The remnant is a tiny finger-bone-shaped piece of stone that is literally a finger bone of Agdrel, overflowing with raw chaotic energy.
66. 2:08:05 The vision of Agdrel. Grimnar knows the Shadow King’s face “during his return, which was not that long ago… he would have seen him at the Deathmatches and around the Dread Fortress.”
    • The vision shows Agdrel in plain clothes, not as a shadowy behemoth, studying photos and books on how to manipulate, control and contain chaos within oneself.
    • His notes ask: “What does one have to do to master the unmasterable? Do you have to sacrifice a couple of planes? Do you have to sacrifice a civilization?… Maybe it involves sacrificing kin. Maybe somebody like his niece, the Grandmaster, Elusia Skypiercer.”
    • None of these were fulfilled. But he did learn to dilute chaos so it could live in the marrow of one’s own bones. “As he would learn at great cost,” this finger bone was one of the first places where chaos began to change who he was.
67. 2:11:35 Grimnar, shaken. He sees it as a physical piece of the Shadow King, still holding some memory or consciousness.
    • To Glauccous: “Nobody who has this kind of power just puts it away.”
    • Glauccous: “You have no idea.” How many do they have? “At least five. But who can say how many more are out there?”
    • Grimnar to the party: “It is the defilement of chaos. We cannot let their master have it. But I’m not sure that we can let our master have it either.… This power should not be wielded by anyone.” Should it be destroyed? “I think that is what I am saying, yes.”
68. 2:14:59 Nehebka reads Grimnar. She is struck that Grimnar, the Grandmaster’s own acolyte, doesn’t want to bring it home. Her insight is a natural 20.
    • What she senses is strong, sincere hesitation. Grimnar sees himself as a vessel for chaos, not its controller, and this “spits in the face of” that belief.
    • He isn’t corrupted by the remnant, just shaken.
69. 2:18:35 Team Stained Glass.
    • Grimnar tries to reverse his mimicry trait to send Nehebka the vision. On the first try he gets close. Kyle narrates his musing: maybe hit Nehebka, or drink chaos juice (“that’s backwash”).
    • Muffy suggests: “What if the two of you somehow… your elements combine and you create glass?… And then I will paint it.” Nehebka: “that’s us, team stained glass.”
    • Nehebka takes both his hands: “where we come from, we commune. Perhaps send your energy to me, I send mine back to you.” Her sands cover their hands as she casts Enhance Ability on him.
70. 2:22:12 Meanwhile, Muffy and Glauccous.
    • Glauccous: “are you guys going to kill us?” Muffy: “Probably not… I can never promise.” Glauccous: “You’re one to talk.” Muffy: “You started it.”
    • Glauccous asks why she reacted that way to Meir’s name. Muffy: “He’s been dead.” Glauccous: “He’s not… he is at Umbracor. I promise you that.”
    • Muffy: “Why is he there and hasn’t come home? If he were alive? Riddle me that!” Glauccous: “I think you’d have to ask him… I don’t know his whole story… He’s painted a bunch of portraits.”
    • Glauccous offers to deliver a message, “depends on if you kill me or not.” Muffy: “Well, if you try to leave, I will.”
    • Glauccous explains they all go home the same way, through the planar gate. With the Warmind dead, they can get home “without having to get… shunted through time and space.”
71. 2:26:05 Muffy’s message to Meir. She sits in the sand and takes out a much-reused piece of parchment. With Meir’s paintbrush, ink forms on the page without paint.
    • She writes little more than her name: “It’s Muffy. Right back.” (Possibly “write back”; there may be a hidden message.)
    • Glauccous takes it: “provided that you let me and Taupe live, then I’ll make sure that this gets into his hands.”
72. 2:27:19 The Grandmaster argument.
    • Glauccous says they would put the remnant in a vault, and they have “like five of them.” Muffy: “No, no, no, the Grandmaster wants them back… the Grandmaster is my Grandmaster.”
    • Glauccous: “There’s two Grandmasters… you all are in the interior, we’re on the periphery… the one on the outside and the one on the inside.” Muffy: “Wrong. There’s one.” She starts painting it out for him.
73. 2:28:54 The shared vision.
    • Grimnar tries again to connect the two of them through chaos, rolling with advantage. Nehebka rolls a natural 20.
    • His chaos merges with her infinite sand. They share one body: Nehebka has the right eye, Grimnar the left. She sees everything he saw.
    • They understand that a tiny finger bone warped an Elder Brain (“Elden Brain”) into the rampaging Warmind, so bigger or gathered pieces “could be disastrous.”
74. 2:31:20 Nehebka’s own motive. Grimnar picks up a hint from Nehebka: the pieces could be useful. It isn’t greed. Her first desire is to return home, or to fix what was broken and shunted into the Void, and bigger pieces might help with that. So she too is “Don’t bring it back to either side… for our own reasons.”
75. 2:32:46 Grimnar: “this is much larger than any one ruler. This is something that could destroy the Void and all people. Chaos cannot be contained or distorted. It must be free to work in its own desire. We’ve seen when the Shadow King tried to manipulate it that the entire void shook and crumbled underneath its corruption.”
76. 2:34:06 What would Elusia do?
    • Nehebka: “Be honest with me, Grimnar Stormclaw. If the Grandmaster that we know had this piece today, what would she do?”
    • Grimnar: “I don’t know. I would like to think that she would destroy it or put it away somewhere where no one could reach it, but who can say? I don’t know her mind anymore than I know yours.”
77. 2:35:22 The plan forms.
    • Nehebka: “I am curious now. To see this other Grandmaster for myself… It would be our duty to your Grandmaster to make sure that it is true.”
    • Grimnar: “It is not so much that I do not trust the Grandmaster. She has never given me a reason not to trust her, but I don’t think I trust anyone with this power.” If Payne’s intentions are bad, they might relieve him of his five pieces, but they shouldn’t walk in carrying this one.
    • Nehebka: “Do you trust me?” Grimnar: “Yes, I think so.”
    • Muffy, called over mid-argument: “Sorry, I was debating Grandmaster stuff… Of course. Unless it’s the wrong answer.”
78. 2:39:03 Nehebka becomes the vessel.
    • “Where I come from… I guarded my god king’s pyramids. There were other elements made from me to guard specific pieces. You all will call them canopic jars.” She grabs her chest and rips it open.
    • “I will be the vessel for now. They won’t take it from me… I am not human. I am not humanoid. I am merely a vessel. You cannot corrupt me.” Muffy: “I’m glad you’re on our side.”
    • The cylinder is hidden inside Nehebka, a nesting-doll arrangement, while Glauccous is distracted. Grimnar thinks the cylinder makes it harder to detect.
    • Grimnar: “I’m not saying we should not give it to the Grandmaster, I just… I think that we need to know more before we do.” Nehebka: they have more pieces, “Which means they have more information.” Muffy: “They also might have my brother.”
79. 2:41:29 The escape plan. Grimnar asks how they’d get out of an enemy stronghold. Muffy has her waystone.
80. 2:43:11 The mustache.
    • Muffy keeps arguing and paints “the right one”: the Grandmaster, with a mustache. Glauccous: “Wait, I didn’t know she had a mustache.”
    • Glauccous: “Our Grandmaster has a beard and a mustache.… Pain[e] and Elusia can be… They can live at the same time.” Muffy draws a beard too.
81. 2:44:43 Asking to come along. Nehebka asks Glauccous to take them to his Grandmaster for information.
    • Glauccous: “Grandmaster Payne is always willing to welcome other denizens of the Void and even knights such as yourselves from the Dread Fortress. He just wants to have a dialogue.”
    • Grimnar: “A name like Grandmaster Payne doesn’t sound all that inviting… Where I come from, your name means something.” Glauccous: “he spells it P-A-Y-N-E… He’s not like, ooh, I’m Grandmaster, I’m gonna whip you.”
    • Grimnar on the remnant: “It has been [put] somewhere safe for now, until we know your true intentions.” Glauccous: “I guess that’s fair.”
    • He carries the sleeping Taupe: “I have the waypoint rune to get us to Umbracor… You guys will be able to see the other side of things… the void is a big place.” Muffy: “Huge!”
82. 2:47:08 Grimnar listens to chaos.
    • He closes his eyes: “Am I making a mistake?” It is not usually for him to decide things.
    • A shiver runs up his spine. At Umbracor he will find answers and be closer to his goals. “Your heart is telling you to go. Your mind and your loyalties are telling you to stay.”
    • “He is chaos first, so he’s gonna go.” “Chaos doesn’t have a loyalty… even though he does.”
83. 2:49:54 Nehebka seeks the God King.
    • Through the cylinder’s wards, the center of her chest burns “as if it was the desert sun itself.” Her inner vision is dragged toward the bone.
    • She sees a cracked reflection of many worlds and realms in kaleidoscopic color, and plucks out the center: “somewhere out there, the God King lives.”
    • “Then her purpose is still her purpose.” “Then we go.”
84. 2:52:48 Treason.
    • Muffy: “why don’t we just leave? These are extra steps. We can make it home and get paid.”
    • Grimnar: “This is… Not about payment or our mission. This is something larger… we must know what the Grandmaster’s intentions are before we give it to anyone.”
    • Muffy: “All right. I will go with.” Grimnar: “This could possibly be treason. I just want to make that clear.” Muffy: “Well, it’s just a regular Tuesday.”

Epilogue

85. 2:54:01 The physician survives.
    • He is alive but terribly wounded, one arm missing. The plumed-helmet Warforged’s frame lies around him.
    • “Oh, God. I was worried that you all wouldn’t make it.” Grimnar: “I think that you’ll find no use for that bomb… we dug through his brain pretty good.”
    • The remaining Warforged stand completely inert. The physician: “So yes, I would say you digging through its brain did the trick.”
86. 2:55:53 The warhead.
    • The physician: “Oh damn, I did want to see what this thing would do.” Grimnar: “Something tells me you’ll find a use for it.”
    • The physician: “Oh, no, I’ll dismantle it. For all we know, Gund would probably put it in a cannon and fire it off for fun.” Muffy: “That does sound fun.”
    • “Thank you, all of you… I do not think we would have survived without you.” Muffy: “Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t have. You’re welcome.” She keeps her “little stanky smile” while he glares.
87. 2:56:50 The war ends. They reclaim the warhead and return by bullet to the site of the solar. “Congratulations, the war is now officially over.” The party passes a parade and fanfare on its way to the planar gate.
88. 2:57:33 Geas at the gate.
    • Glauccous: “we’re going to go to Umbracor and you all are going to meet Grandmaster Payne. Promise is going to be worth it.”
    • Nehebka rejects detonating the warhead (“unnecessary. She’d rather take this place for herself”).
    • She asks Muffy and Grimnar: “Should I make this more permanent just to be safe?” Both agree. Grimnar: “It would be nice to have a reliable ally.”
    • The sands inside Glauccous clutch as she casts Geas: “you will be our ally and will not break,” for 30 days. Already charmed, Glauccous chooses to fail the save. If he acts against it, he takes psychic damage.
    • QR0WNTV: “I’ve never said Nehebka was a good person.”
89. 3:02:03 Into the Void.
    • Glauccous: “hey, we’re allies here. All right, let’s go.” He holds up his brooch and the planar gate flashes.
    • Mid-vein, the path branches off “into the raw stuff of the void down an unseen path” of blues, blacks and grays, “alleyways through the void.”
    • They are bound for the heart of the Order of Shadow Ascendant, Umbracor.
90. 3:02:53 “the season finale of arc one of Pieces of a King.”

Who and what appears

Characters

Grimnar Stormclaw (Drew)

• A massive white polar bear and acolyte of the Grandmaster. He wears the Dread Fortress skull as a belt buckle.
• Chaos lightning blackens his eyes. He floats like an electromagnet, and his mimicry trait copies an opponent’s trait (here, necrotic resistance) through chaos energy.
• Believes in being a vessel for chaos, not controlling it. He knows the Shadow King’s face from his recent return, at the Deathmatches and the Dread Fortress.
• Saw Agdrel’s memories through the finger bone. Chose to go to Umbracor (“chaos first”) and admits it may be treason.

Nehebka (QR0WNTV)

• A sand being created to guard the god-king’s pyramids, possibly from “Hardicure” (spelling uncertain).
• Doesn’t sleep, has tremorsense, takes sand form (a tornado lower body) and swaps places with allies through sand.
• Serves the God King, not the Grandmaster, and feels no empathy “unless the God King commands it.” Her first desire is to return home or repair what was shunted into the Void.
• She now holds the remnant cylinder inside her chest as a living canopic jar.
• Charmed Glauccous by forcing sand into his mouth, then placed a 30-day Geas on him. Sensed that the God King lives.

Muffy (JustSeum)

• Paints in the air with her dead brother Meir’s paintbrush, which makes ink without paint and has quill-like bristles.
• Rallied an RBA squad as its “mascot” and killed a Titan with a damage-type rainbow. Choked Taupe unconscious.
• Cheerful and cold-blooded (“Where would you like to die?”). Carries a waystone.
• Learned that Meir may be alive at Umbracor, and sent him a note.

Meir (Myer/Maier; not present)

• Muffy’s brother, an artist (paint, mixed media, many portraits). Muffy believed him long dead.
• Glauccous and Taupe say he is an ally at Umbracor who speaks of Muffy often and “misses you.” They saw him a couple of days ago.

Glauccous, Knight of the Order of Shadow and “Antumbran”

• Human, neck-length dark hair, soft features. Fights with a black blade trailing smoke.
• From the periphery. Under Charm Person, then Geas for 30 days, he is now the party’s guide.
• Carries the brooch (planar relay) and the waypoint rune to Umbracor.

Taupe (Toph?), Knight of the Order of Shadow and “Antumbran”

• Ash-gray tiefling with ink-black hair and an arcane stave.
• Carried the remnant containment cylinder and an obsidian crown-and-shield brooch.
• Wants to die “on a beach with a drink.” Choked unconscious by Muffy and carried out by Glauccous.

Grandmaster Payne (the Grandmaster of Shadow)

• Leader of the Order of Shadow, “like a father to us all.” Bearded and mustached. Not big on formality.
• Wants dialogue with Grandmaster Skypiercer, and peace for people “not to be afraid of the dark.”
• The cold-open Grandmaster is inferred to be Payne: the knights call him “Grandmaster” (0:02:51) and later name their Grandmaster as Payne (2:45:01).

The physician

• An illithid scientist who helped create the Warmind, and the Warmind’s would-be destroyer.
• Fights with mind-breaking force, a misericorde and a teal light blade.
• Lost an arm holding the tunnel. Will dismantle the warhead.

The Nightingales: the physician’s two battered attendants. They heal the party and guard the bullet.

Trissavin: one of the RBA’s greatest leaders. Blasted by a Titan’s cannon and saved by Nehebka. Promised that Nehebka will be honored “indefinitely.”

Gund: an RBA figure (inferred from 0:24:28 and 2:56:01) who would “put it in a cannon and fire it off for fun.”

The Warmind: an Elder Brain (illithid skull with tentacles) warped by a finger-bone remnant of Agdrel into a rampaging Warforged commander. Glauccous and Taupe put it down; it died once the remnant was extracted.

Agdrel, the Shadow King (in a vision)

• Studied how to master chaos and considered sacrificing planes, a civilization, or kin such as his niece Elusia.
• Learned to put diluted chaos into his own bone marrow.

Others

• The 34th Deep Divers, who dug the tunnels to the mountain.
• The hobgoblin commando, thrown off the Titan.
• The bladed, “plumed” Warforged leader, killed by the physician.
• Titans (giant Warforged walkers).
• The God King, Nehebka’s creator, who is alive somewhere.

Places

• The realm of cold light / “world of eternal twilight”: the Order of Shadow’s seat, overlooking a city. Inferred to be Umbracor.
• Umbracor (Umbracor/Lumbercore/Umbricor): Payne’s monastery-fortress. It holds at least five remnants and Meir. It is reached by a hidden branch off the planar veins.
• Damerung (Dameron/Damrung), with the site of the solar, the RBA tunnels and the Warmind’s mountain chamber.
• The periphery vs the interior of the Void. The periphery is “pretty lawless,” with few Void Knights.
• The planar gate, and the planar veins between realms.

Groups

• The Order of Shadow / Order of Ascendant Shadows / Order of Shadow Ascendant / Shadow Knights: once the Dragon Knights. They call themselves “what remains of the Shadow King’s forces” but disown him. They hold the books and materials, and gather remnants.
• The RBA (with its stone guard, drow elites and hobgoblin commandos), the Warforged, and Void Knights.

Items

• The remnant: a finger-bone-shaped stone that is a literal finger bone of Agdrel. It is now sealed in the cylinder inside Nehebka.
• The containment cylinder: ringed wards that can hold and dispel any magical item; artifice worthy of the Arbiter’s collection.
• The celestial warhead: powered by a celestial being. Never used; the physician will dismantle it.
• Glauccous’s brooch / planar relay and waypoint rune. Taupe’s obsidian crown-on-shield brooch.
• Meir’s paintbrush. Muffy’s waystone. The bullet transport.

Lore statements

• There are currently two Grandmasters: Skypiercer in the interior and Payne on the periphery.
• Remnants of the Shadow King are scattered across the Void and “plaguing” it. The order holds at least five.
• Agdrel put chaos into his bones; this finger bone was one of the first parts changed.
• Grimnar says “Many [of us] saw him defeated by the Arbiter” and that the Shadow King “returned… not that long ago” to rule.

Quotes by character

Grimnar Stormclaw (Drew)

• 0:18:42 “I will meet you at the top.”
• 0:33:04 “I have no intention of holding back. Not that I could, even if I wanted to. For it is chaos that flows through me.”
• 0:34:29 “What has chaos done? All I have seen here is that what you have done.”
• 0:57:23 “We must be careful. There is a deep chaos presence here, but it is tainted in some way.”
• 1:06:18 “You know, the Shadow King is gone. Dead, some would say. Many we saw him defeated by the Arbiter.”
• 1:13:17 “Our orders are from the highest authority in the void. So it does seem like we must let chaos decide.”
• 2:12:51 “Nobody who has this kind of power just puts it away.”
• 2:13:38 “It is the defilement of chaos. We cannot let their master have it. But I’m not sure that we can let our master have it either.”
• 2:32:46 “Chaos cannot be contained or distorted. It must be free to work in its own desire.”
• 2:34:33 “I don’t know her mind anymore than I know yours.”
• 2:36:47 “She has never given me a reason not to trust her, but I don’t think I trust anyone with this power. Not yet, anyways.”
• 2:53:45 “This could possibly be treason. I just want to make that clear.”

Nehebka (QR0WNTV)

• 0:10:40 “We will do this with or without you. But I hope someone hears a prayer for you and that you survive this.”
• 0:11:28 “I do not care for your honor, nor do I care for your mortal debts.”
• 0:32:26 “Do not be afraid to use your full elemental force. If I am near, it will not harm me.”
• 0:40:49 “And the Dread Fortress is not the ultimate power in the multiversal space.”
• 0:47:39 “You should keep your wits about you, Grimnar.”
• 1:11:32 “If you would like to fight, that is your prerogative. But understand, you make threats that you cannot keep.”
• 1:27:51 “The way of the Dread Fortress is chaos, and you have chosen it.”
• 1:29:14 “Not unless the God King commands it.”
• 1:45:15 “I told you though, I do not need to kill you. We will get what we want.”
• 2:34:06 “Be honest with me, Grimnar Stormclaw. If the Grandmaster that we know had this piece today, what would she do?”
• 2:39:36 “I will be the vessel for now. They won’t take it from me.”
• 2:39:48 “I am not human. I am not humanoid. I am merely a vessel. You cannot corrupt me.”

Muffy (JustSeum)

• 0:59:41 “Yoo-hoo, we’re right here.”
• 1:01:05 “Oh, you must be talking about my brother. Did you ever meet him? Great artist.”
• 1:02:10 “But he died a while ago. I even have his paintbrush.”
• 1:20:43 “But I want to!”
• 1:22:38 “Sorry, I can’t hear you.”
• 1:30:38 “Where would you like to die?”
• 1:38:45 “It’ll stop hurting when you go to sleep.”
• 1:41:08 “I put her to sleep.”
• 2:25:00 “Why is he there and hasn’t come home? If he were alive? Riddle me that!”
• 2:21:40 “What if the two of you somehow… your elements combine and you create glass?… And then I will paint it.”
• 2:53:57 “Well, it’s just a regular Tuesday.”
• 2:56:33 “Oh, yeah, you wouldn’t have. You’re welcome.”

Glauccous (Kyle)

• 0:59:46 “You all don’t look metal and you don’t look like RBA. So I’m going to make a guess here. Dread Fortress.”
• 1:06:36 “We serve the Grandmaster. We don’t serve the Shadow King. The Shadow King is dead.”
• 1:10:57 “Please do not make me do this. I would rather you be able to meet Maier alive.”
• 1:27:19 “Is this the way of the Dread Fortress? Violence over peace?”
• 1:28:16 “Do you even know what happens here in the void? Do you know what these people go through? You choose chaos.”
• 1:42:20 “If we’re going to stop chaos, I have to make sure that order prevails.”
• 1:43:01 “No more senseless violence. More people pulled out of their homes for sport, for entertainment. The Shadow King is dead. He failed.”
• 1:56:53 “Because we’re what remains of the Shadow King’s forces? I mean, we have the books, we have the materials.”
• 1:57:40 “Grandmaster Pain[e] has been sort of like a father to us all. We’re all from the periphery.”
• 1:58:32 “He just wants us all to not have to live in fear, not to be afraid of the dark.”
• 2:06:32 “You didn’t ask. You just told me to dig.”
• 2:43:39 “Our Grandmaster has a beard and a mustache.”

Taupe (Kyle)

• 0:00:43 “I am admittedly nervous, but excited about this prospect.”
• 1:01:14 “Yes, he’s a exquisite artist. He’s one of our allies. I can see the resemblance.”
• 1:02:30 “I think he might be your Meir.”
• 1:07:07 “Well, there are currently two… The Grandmaster of Shadow.”
• 1:07:28 “He wants peace. These things, these remnants, are plaguing the Void.”
• 1:22:14 “This isn’t what he’d want.”
• 1:30:27 “I don’t want to die here.”
• 1:31:09 “Preferably on a beach with a drink.”

The Grandmaster of Shadow (Kyle; inferred to be Payne)

• 0:01:54 “We found another echo, a remnant of the Shadow King on the world of Dameron.”
• 0:02:51 “Offer them our peace, but do not allow them to take the remnant.”
• 0:02:51 “Was this your dream, Shadow King? To live, even in death. What parts of you remain to plague the void even now?”
• 0:03:45 “And what price will we pay for your folly?”

The physician (Kyle)

• 0:04:46 “This next part of the operation rests firmly within our hands.”
• 0:30:50 “I’m not going to simply have you take out the trash and do the dishes.”
• 0:34:18 “Why chaos? Here, you’ve seen what chaos has done. Why do you align yourself with it?”
• 0:35:03 “Well, can’t argue with that. All right. Facts be facts, I guess.”
• 0:38:42 “We don’t fight like this. There’s somebody else here. This does not bode well.”
• 0:41:44 “I am more than adept at breaking apart the minds of my opponents as I break apart their bodies in tow.”
• 2:56:01 “For all we know, Gund would probably put it in a cannon and fire it off for fun.”

Trissavin (Kyle)

• 0:09:42 “Please, please finish this for us. We can only do so much.”
• 0:11:21 “And if I do, then know this, Nehebka, you will be honored here indefinitely.”

Canon notes

• Shadow Knights (the Order of the Ascendant Shadow, formerly Agdrel’s Dragon Knights, led by Grand Master Payne) are canon from here on. S1E9’s “Shadow Knight” stays a slip.
• Bec was not at Pieces of a King.