Curse of Radiance Chapter 4, Episode 1 - Nothing Seems to Go Right

The start of a new story arc, the Zhentarim arc, is upon us!

In this episode, the party tries to secure an appointment with Elminster the Sage, but they fail spectacularly. They they try to save some people attacked by some giants, but they fail spectacularly. At least maybe they can just find Dagger Falls to be a safe and friendly place... and you can guess they probably fail spectacularly.

Real talk for a moment: I think this story arc is my favorite one from the whole campaign. Don't get me wrong, there's still some great episodes and chapters to come- but I really have a lot of fond memories of these next few episodes (though a lot of that goes hand-in-hand with some fraught conflicts we had while making them; I might go into these in a future post or something, or I may not). I am VERY happy with how this one turned out, and I hope you all like it too!

Also, one more thing- every October I watch and review 31 horror films and post them on my blog, Gabe Reviews Horror. This year I'm reviewing 31 holiday-themed horror films, so if that sounds interesting, give it a look!

Enjoy, and see you all next week!

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Chapter 4, Episode 1: Too Little, Too Late

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Curse of Radiance Chapter 3, Episode 7: The Lore Dump Episode

We're back in the present! Finally, we're back!

After a month of dungeon crawling and an extra week of travel, the podcast has arrived back in the present day in the town of Shadowdale. Fennec was instructed by an old goatherd to go meet someone in the Tower of Ashaba, where he met the Nameless Bard, whom the party met on their way to Tilverton. So this week, they're going to hear a tale from this enigmatic figure that might shed some light on the situation they'd been dealing with... or it might raise more questions. The operative one being, can they trust this guy at all, after he admits to being involved in the creation of their tattoos?

This was an interesting episode to make, because on one hand, I was really happy to be able to get out some of this exposition (most of which was just describing the plot of the novel Azure Bonds by Jeff Grubb and Kate Novak), and see what the party did with that information. But on the other hand, can I really release an episode that's just 75% me rambling about a bunch of plot that doesn't directly involve any of the players? I don't know, but we're going to find out together.

I hope you all enjoy this episode, and really I hope you all enjoyed this entire story arc. Because next week, we're starting on the Zhentarim arc! And after that... just you wait!

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Chapter 3, Episode 7: A Lasting Legacy

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Two Episodes For the Price of None

Hello, everyone! We're back this week with another episode of Curse of Radiance- where we finish out the prologue flashback and bring us right back to where we started. But also... what's this? Is that a SECOND episode I see, over on the Inter-Party Conflict podcast feed?

It IS! What a surprise!

I'll explain it a bit more in the actual episode, but last year I spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the rights holder to the original theme music of the Curse of the Azure Bonds video game, and (after lots of dead ends) it eventually led me to get in contact with David Warhol, the composer of said music! He agreed to an interview, and I think it was a lot of fun and you should all check it out.

Speaking of music, I've finally gotten around to updating the Music Credits page from the sidebar, with full music credits for every audio track used in this podcast thus far. (I'm a bit embarrassed that it took me this long, I kept thinking "Oh, nobody's even noticed that link so it doesn't matter" but as of this writing that page has like 150 views, so to anybody who's been eagerly awaiting some music credits for the past four months, I humbly apologize.) Now that I've gotten everything in order it should be trivial for me to update it as more episodes come out, so you should expect it to be up-to-date whenever you see it.

Anyway, it's been a tumultuous week for me as always, so I hope all of you at home are having a better time. See you all next week!

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Curse of Radiance - Chapter 3, Episode 6: Prologue - The Nameless Bard

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Inter-Party Conflict - Supplemental Episode - Interview with David Warhol

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Curse of Radiance Chapter 3, Episode 5: A Warlord, a Cleric, and a Giant Sorceress Walk Into a Bar

Our three heroes reach the end of the dungeon: the tomb of Hob Kraven, a figure whose evil was so powerful he corrupted the order of paladins entombed with him. Will Torunn, Fennec, and Ildana be able to defeat his shambling undead form? And will they find out the last mystery of this divine prison?

This episode marks the end of the dungeon I created for this introductory adventure (but bear with me one more week, as we've still got one final episode to the prologue sequence). I know I complained about the pacing of this adventure a couple weeks ago but I'm pretty happy with how the dungeon turned out overall; there wasn't a ton of roleplaying from the players but I still think they were able to let each of their characters' personalities shine through exploration and combat. The end of this episode provides some much-needed lore and Faerun history (needed by me, not necessarily needed by anyone else) and helps tee up the last portion of this prologue sequence and set the players on their journey to Tilverton so the campaign can start.

Fun fact: "Hob Kraven" is entirely my own creation, and I came up with the name by scrolling through Facebook and looking for something I could use as inspiration for a name. I'm part of a Calvin & Hobbes meme group, so it caught my eye, and I turned "Hobbes Calvin" into "Hob Kraven". I think I'm pretty clever sometimes; whether this is one of those times is up for debate.

Anyway, I hope you're all having a better week than I am. (As bad of a mood as I was in last week, I got some terrible work-related news right after posting last week's blog entry so just remember, however bad things are, they can always get worse!)

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Chapter 3, Episode 5: Prologue - Unintended Consequences

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Curse of Radiance Chapter 3, Episode 4 - This Year Officially Sucks

Still in the flashback to their first adventure in Phlan, the heroes have located both keys they need to progress. But an encounter with the tomb's hungry shadows leaves them drained, and they're about to find out that they were woefully mistaken about the nature of this dungeon...

Folks, I need to take a moment and step away from the typical episode blog post. This has been a rough week for me, and really a rough whole year. Those of you who know me personally probably already know about all of this but I'm still working through it so please bear with me.

This week in particular started off really good, actually. Let's focus on that for a moment. After basically three years of production (the very first day I recorded an episode was 8/15/22) this week marks the final session of primary recording for this podcast. Scheduling has been a nightmare for the past six months or so- we had literally a three-month-gap between two episodes a little while ago- but I had this week off from work and had enough advance notice to make sure we had a few days everyone was available so we could finally knock out the last few encounters. It went great, and now I've got like six months to get these episodes edited. (I still need to get with each player individually to record an epilogue, but otherwise, the campaign is done. It still doesn't feel real.)

In addition to finishing the podcast, I had a really cool opportunity to record an interview with someone involved in the computer game that this campaign is based on! (It'll eventually go out on the Inter-Party Conflict podcast feed, so keep an eye out. It'll have its own blog post when it goes live.) So that was really exciting. I also got some friends over and played an in-person RPG off-mic, which I haven't done in years. So that was cool too.

But... it's not all good.

If you follow me on any other social media or if you've heard Inter-Party Conflict then you almost definitely know about my dog, Super Hans. He just celebrated his ninth birthday last month (which is pretty old for a great dane) but has spent most of this year battling some persistent health issues. We found out last year he was diabetic, he went blind in January with cataracts (although we were able to get him surgery to restore his sight in June, albeit at great cost and requiring a constant medication regimen to recover from), and we also learned in June that he most likely had some kind of sinus tumor that caused him long-lasting discomfort and breathing issues. But, of course, he's our boy, and we would do whatever it took to keep him happy and healthy.

Well, this week, he passed away. He started having seizures one night (likely due to the growth of the sinus tumor) and by the next morning they had gotten so bad we had no choice but to put him to sleep. It's been so difficult coming to terms with this in the days since- was there nothing else we could have done? How do you move on after losing something that was such a big part of your life for nearly a decade? How do I even walk around my house without expecting to see or hear him around every corner? And... how do I move on, without feeling like I'm turning my back on his memory?

It's been tough. The whole year has been so stressful, with all of his health issues and my own stresses at work. Releasing this podcast has simultaneously been an escape from the stresses of my life, and also a source of more of that stress as I panic over the last-minute revisions and quality checks I require of myself now that it's gone out to the public. I love this podcast with so much of my being but damned if it hasn't been a massive, massive burden I've willingly taken on.

Anyway.

This week marks the end of an era in several different ways, and I sincerely hope that the coming weeks will allow me the time to rest and recover.

Thank you all for listening, and reading, and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.

And if you have any pets, please go give them an extra hug today. And tomorrow.

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Chapter 3, Episode 4: Prologue - Shadows

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Curse of Radiance Chapter 3, Episode 3 - Torunn Hates the Sewers

It's another Flashback episode!

In this week's Curse of Radiance, the party continues on through the ancient crypt beneath the Cracked Crown tavern in Phlan. They've got an ominous riddle instructing them along their way, and have to wade through waist-deep muck in order to find the Guardian's Guardian in their search for two keys needed to get through the dungeon. Can they find what they're looking for, or are they going to face the long shadow of defeat?

I mentioned in the disclaimer at the start of this episode that I learned an important lesson about dungeon crawls when making these episodes; another lesson that goes hand-in-hand just has to do with pacing. I'm not going to give myself too much crap since this was my first real outing into the Actual Play space, but the pacing of this adventure leaves a LOT to be desired. (When I first wrote this adventure, I really expected it to be over in one session, two tops. It ended up being four sessions just for the dungeon, let alone the aftermath.) So if nothing else I hope listeners might be able to see how different this adventure is from what the podcast will eventually become; I really learned to pace things better as we went. Or, at least, that's what I hope people will think!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one, because we've got a couple more like it coming up!

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Chapter 3, Episode 3: Prologue - Bones

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca! 

Curse of Radiance Chapter 3, Episode 2 - Titles Be Damned

We're taking a brief detour, back to the beginning: when the three adventurers met, before being branded with cursed tattoos, in a town called Phlan. Come join Torunn, Fennec, and Ildana as they delve into an unearthed crypt and receive ominous warnings of the dangers lurking behind every corner!

It's already explained in the disclaimer at the beginning of the episode, but in case you haven't listened yet, I'll briefly explain it here: this episode (the next five episodes, actually) is a little bit of a diversion from the plot. These next few episodes were actually recorded before the podcast began (before the party woke up in Tilverton with five unwanted tattoos), as a little test/practice before we got into the campaign proper. It's mostly unrelated from the story so far, but now that I've found a good opportunity to slot these episodes into the main plot of the show, expect elements from these to show up later on!

It definitely felt risky including these episodes in the main show (especially when placed after a plot-significant cliffhanger like at the end of last week's episode) but I think it'll pay off in the end. So please bear with me, stick with us for a few more episodes, and soon enough the party will be right back on track and you'll all be better for it!

Oh, one more thing: this episode marks the unveiling of what was originally going to be the theme music for the whole podcast- a piano rendition of the title music from the computer game Curse of the Azure Bonds (as well as its predecessor, Pool of Radiance). We didn't use this music at first because we weren't sure who owned the rights and obviously hadn't gotten permission to use it- but there have been some recent developments on that front (expect some sort of related announcement in future weeks)! The music as you're hearing it was arranged and performed by Jay's sister Erin, based on the original music composed by Dave Warhol. (Some day I'll get around to finishing the music credits page on here, so expect some links whenever that day comes.) We're using this new (old?) theme music for these five prologue episodes, but expect the music to return to the regular theme after that.

Thanks for listening, and please let us know what you think!

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Chapter 3, Episode 2: Prologue - Ghouls

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Curse of Radiance is a member of the Uncharted North podcast network. For more of their shows, check them out at UnchartedNorth.ca!