by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Fantasy High: Junior Year
Episode 7 “Stress Tested”
With Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Brian Murphy
Streaming now on Dropout.tv

“Fine. I’ll let the future just happen, I guess. Like some asshole.” - Elf trying to get Adaine to give him an Elven Oracle reading (Brennan Lee Mulligan)

As the new week begins, our intrepid heroes (along with the rest of their school) are pulled into an assembly. Principal Grix announces that Agent Clark, Fig’s nemesis, will now be a presence on the school’s campus. Fig (Emily Axford) immediately disguises herself as Kristen (Ally Beardsley), but Brennan rolled high on Clark’s perception, and he’s not fooled by there being two Kristens. Except Adaine (Siobhan Thompson) uses one of her divination rolls. Emily rolls high enough on her Deception, though, and gets away with the disguise.

However, all of this is happening because somebody snitched about the party (likely the Rat Grinders), and everybody at the assembly is subjected to a drug test by Principal Grix where they sit in the auditorium. A bunch of kids at the school are getting rounded up, even though the Bad Kids are totally fine. Riz (Brian Murphy) frees Max, who got rounded up, and they ask him about what was happening downstairs. He reveals that Ivy gave him the drugs. Additionally, Kipperlilly ordered food trucks for lunch as part of her campaign. Which really seems to be working on everybody.

Kristen decides to order something and say hello to Kipperlilly. She’s still wearing the Wranglers and the cowboy hat and gets the idea to use the hat as a bowl for chips and dip. Ally is truly one of the wildest, most interesting people in the world. I love them so much. So, Kristen says she saw Kipperlilly at the party, which Kipperlilly balks at because she was “studying.” When pressed, because she’s already passed junior year, she says she was studying “student government.” Kristen slams the ball back into Kipperlilly’s court, though, by peppering in the fact that she knows Kipperlilly didn’t find the rogue teacher, the rogue teacher found her. Gorgug (Zac Oyama) cuts the tension by eating some chips out of Kristen’s hat because Zac is hilarious, and this remains one of the funniest groups of people ever assembled.

Kristen lets it slip that Cassandra died and Kipperlilly, with all the cunning she can muster, lets the party get a little ways away before asking (loudly) how Kristen can cast spells now. Cue a record scratch moment on the school lawn. And with that, Brennan begins downtime for the party. The way downtime for the next month or so of their school year is going to work is with skill checks for the various things they want to do. If they come up short, they can re-roll, but will receive stress tokens. Fabian (Lou Wilson) sets up a study hall at Seacaster Manor for everybody before they begin rolls. Incredible!

Adaine gets a job at Basrar’s Soda Fountain after Siobhan uses one of her divination rolls to do okay. Lou rolls well on the popularity roll and Fabian’s lo-fi study nights are a great time. Zac rolls for academics, ripping through all four years’ worth classes he has to take since he doesn’t have an MCAT. Gorgug does well in his freshman artificer classes. Sophomore year difficulty goes up and he does okay but not great. Zac takes a stress token to re-roll but does worse with a nat 1. He takes another stress token and rolls a nat 20! For his junior year artificer classes, he gets advantage and rolls another nat 20. Zac is a fucking legend, honestly. For his barbarian classes the DC has gone up to 20 and he rolls a 23 which gives him a C in the class. Passing, but not as well as he did in artificer.

Since Kristen can’t cast spells without her god, she opts for grabbing office hours with the cleric teacher. Kristen tells Yolanda about the voice that spoke to her after Cassandra died. She’s very interested in the voice and what (or who) it might be. Yolanda is letting Kristen stay in the cleric classes if she does a lot of academic study, since she cannot participate in the practical aspect. However, if she doesn’t regain her ability to cast spells by next semester, she will fail. No amount of essays can keep you in a magical class if you cannot do magic.

Kristen goes back to a meditation room and tries to reconnect to Cassandra. Ally rolls okay but isn’t happy with it—despite it being a pass. They take a stress token and re-roll and it’s much better. Kristen goes deep and remembers the forest of the Nightmare King, realizing that Cassandra is not dead. She can’t give Kristen magic, but she is still alive. The 22 Ally rolled also means that Craig remains a follower. Yay!

Brennan once said that “Emily (Axford) is one of the best D&D players in the world. Endlessly creative, so fun to play with. She was also sent from Hell to kill me.” I think of that quote often, including her leaning across the table to her husband (Murph) to ask Riz if Fig should become a paladin of Cassandra, rather than any of the other classes she’s been dancing around.

Fig isn’t quite sold on becoming a paladin for Cassandra, though, but she is toying with the idea. She talks to Zara, the warlock teacher because it’s time for Fig to actually get her MCAT, regardless of which classes she’s multiclassing into. The warlock class takes a field trip to the Bottomless Pit, after Zara finds out that Fig is Gorthalax’s daughter. Fig wants to add a recording studio to the Pit and condemns all the souls that are kinda vibing there to rock.

“If you’re here, it’s because something fucked up happened in your life. Work it out in a fucking guitar, processed through some nasty, distorted amp.” - Fig (Emily Axford)

Fig has her imp, Baby, look into the ancestral owner of the Pride Armor, since she (and Adaine) had the vision of herself in it in the future. She also talks to Zara about becoming a warlock who has a deal with herself, though it’s very dangerous since it’s easiest to break a promise to yourself, rather than to another—at least according to Zara. With her MCAT signed by Zara, it’s up to Fig to get it signed by whichever teacher she wants to multiclass into.

Zac fails his roll for the Owlbears, so he takes another stress token (putting him up to three out of, it seems like, five). He fails again and steps away for a bit because Gorgug’s pulled too thin (aka the DCs are getting too high) between all the classes he has to also pass, without an MCAT.

Fabian asks Mazey for help with his bard classes, after succeeding wildly on the roll for it. It’s also very much a flirty thing, which is deeply cute and wonderful. He takes a stress token for his roll for the Owlbears, but ultimately succeeds. Adaine decided to try and set herself up as a black marketeer with her Jacket of Useful Things, making Siobhan do another job check roll in addition to her academics roll. She succeeds at both before having the AV Club look at the footage from the party. She fails that roll, however, and takes a stress token to re-roll. She fails again.

With roughly a thousand extracurriculars, Murph is rolling with disadvantage to just show up and exist in all of them (Riz only needs them to pad his transcripts, after all). He succeeds and is a pleasant presence in every single club.

Fig goes to the barbarian class that she has to audit so Gorgug can keep taking them, per Porter. She asks Porter to sign her MCAT, trying to actively deceive him into actually signing Gorgug’s. She fails… pretty bad. She has a back and forth about if Porter is being weird about Gorgug’s MCAT. He finally takes Fig’s actual MCAT and signs it. She’s been attending so many barbarian classes since freshman year that on extra credit alone she’s a barbarian—and has been the whole time—rather than a bard. This allows her to roll advantage on her academic rolls—which means she can do whatever she wants for classes. She goes to a paladin class, but still isn’t sure. Porter is a multiclass adviser, though, and she goes to see him.

Ally decides to roll for popularity (for the campaign) before they do academics. Murph takes a stress token so Kristen can try for popularity again. He’s the only person allowed to take it for somebody else. Ally rolls a 21 on the second re-roll and does great. Kristen does academics after campaigning, doing moderately on her first paper.

As the Bad Kids go into their collective mystery rolls, everybody is looking into different things. Fig is looking into Ruben, his songs, and his dating history—she succeeds and works on incepting Wanda into his dreams. Fabian reaches out to Ivy to hang out at school but fails every single check for it. Riz tries to figure out why Kalina called out Ragh, in particular. He thinks that maybe he’s meant to be an avatar but realizes that’s not correct. He also investigates Lucy Frostblade and finds out that she was confirmed gone (presumed dead) with magic, but it just means she’s not alive and on the material plane. Also, she was last seen by the lake. Additionally, he finds out that Lucy submitted to change her deity but withdrew it before she died. Adaine checks in about Grix because he seems deeply weird. Kristen goes back to Yolanda and asks about Lucy. Kristen gives Yolanda the information about Lucy trying to swap her god and Yolanda is frightened because she’s so sure that Lucy never would have changed her deity and then died (to their knowledge) swiftly after.

Murph, brilliant player that he is, poses a question as they finish up Kristen’s mystery roll. Was the name of the god that Lucy was trying to swap to, redacted by the school, or was it unreadable… like the god had died? The sheet is not blank, but it cannot be read by mortal eyes, per Brennan.

As we head into the next episode, it’s time for the Frostyfaire Festival to begin. Riz meant to investigate the mystery there, related to what his mom was doing at the start of the season, but time got away from him. School and teenagerdom got in the way and now the party will be moving into this major event potentially without any cursory knowledge of what it might hold for them. However, Lydia did get a bunch of documents from her former party, bringing them closer to understanding what happened to her and what might be happening around them. Perhaps it will all merge at the Thistlespring tree!