by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

Fantasy High: Junior Year
Episode 9 “Vulture Clash”
With Brennan Lee Mulligan, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, and Brian Murphy
Streaming now on Dropout.tv

“You guys are gonna say something weird on purpose and then the vultures are gonna kill us!” - Riz Gukgak (Brian Murphy)

As the party enters the vulture dimension, various status effects come off them. Riz (Brian Murphy) is no longer under Grix’s control, while Fig (Emily Axford) comes out of her stun. Fabian (Lou Wilson) and Gorgug (Zac Oyama), however, remain incapacitated while Kristen (Ally Beardsley) is asked to answer the riddle of the Vulture King. But in the way of all comedy bits on the show that become real moments, Brennan has Lou and Zac roll again and both Fabian and Gorgug are back up and good to go before the riddle is ever actually asked.

The party elects to answer the riddle simultaneously, though not unanimously. The correct answer to the Vulture King’s riddle will give them the help and support of the vulture dimension, while the incorrect answer will mean their deaths. It’s a riddle with a multiple-choice answer and the Bad Kids must answer at once, without hesitation.

The riddle: “Vultures: Yay or nay?”

There’s a resounding “Yay!” from the party, as the entire cast holds hands around the table, uncertain, before it leaves Brennan’s mouth, what hell they might be in for. But Dimension 20 is often goofy, especially Fantasy High. Not to mention, it’s the perfect kind of weird teen film side quest and I’ve never been so tickled by something so silly before in my life.

The “help” of the Vulture King is, of course, magic items that are the result of the other vultures absolutely ripping his body apart to help. This is from the man who had Arthur Aguefort shoot himself in the head to bring a character back in the very first episode of Dimension 20, after all. Now, armed with the magical remains of the Vulture King, the Bad Kids return to the Frostyfaire Folk Festival battlefield!

The situation has changed slightly, with time not moving any differently in the vulture dimension. More of the machines are down, Grix has Mirror Image around him, and he’s using Hold Person on Ruben, who’s clearly about to cast some kind of awesome spell. Fig comes out of the gate with a Fireball at Grix. There’s some Counterspell action from him, but Fig wins in a roll off to Counterspell his Counterspell (an always cheeky little back and forth, whenever it happens). As the left side of the table takes their turns, and absolutely wallops Grix, his concentration is broken on Hold Person, which allows Ruben to play and give everybody Bardic Inspiration. Adaine (Siobhan Thompson) Counterspells when Grix tries to cast a spell to lock Ruben in a cage. An absolute power move that only happens because of Ruben’s Bardic Inspiration, in a real example of teens absolutely rocking adults when they come together.

Fabian decides, since Grix isn’t that far above the stage, that it might be very cool to jump off the stage and attack him. Which! Absolutely! Works! At least once! And once is, potentially, all you need when you do over 30 points of damage and win the battle.

As the festival clears up and the party cleans themselves up, Kristen brings Adaine back up (since she went down during the fight) and Adaine uses Identify on Grix’s broken robot body. With certainty, though, Grix is not being tampered with by an outside force, but Emily brings up a great point that since he was created to enforce the bylaws of the school… maybe somebody changed the bylaws. Or maybe the existence of the school is in danger? Surely there’s something wrong if this is how Grix ended up.

The Rat Grinder’s absence with Rubin’s band playing is of deep interest to the Bad Kids. Under the stage, there are a bunch of red, glowing power cords. Very suspicious! Gorgug unplugs one and sees all the red lights fade back into the blue of archano-tech. All the points of the power cords are under the speakers, and it seems like something was magically forced into the air by the music. Perhaps a rage god, based on Rubin’s lyrics.

The Bad Kids decide to go to the Far Haven Woods to talk to the rats to see if they might know something about the Rat Grinders. Fabian eats some of the rotting guts of a vulture to use the magic item from the Vulture King to talk to animals. Kristen holds out some meat and rolls animal handling to a giant rat in the clearing (his name is Spot). They talk to the rat and show it an image of Lucy to see if he knew about her and the other Rat Grinders. Lucy started bringing the rats back to life, after the rest of the Grinders left the woods.

Fabian, having taken (and used) one of Fig’s absolutely cursed Bardic Inspirations, lets Spot lead them to the lake where Lucy went missing from. As Spot runs ahead to see if any other rats are paying their respects, he gets nabbed by a bird. The party springs into action, but nobody beats the bird’s initiative, and he gets fully eaten. RIP to Spot. He was a good rat!

Riz looks around. Murph rolls a natural 20 and he finds the body of Yolanda Badgood, the cleric teacher, and discovers she’s been dead for only a few hours. The party discovers that somebody has forced Yolanda’s soul from her body using the name of a dead god, as the unreadable god’s name is emblazoned on her chest. Adaine uses one of her powers to see into the Astral Plane and they find Lucy’s body under one of the trees, also with the unreadable glyph of the dead god’s name.

It’s clear that Lucy was killed by many people, long ago. However, Yolanda was likely killed during Rubin’s set at the festival. Kristen tries for a Divine Intervention roll, even without her connection to Cassandra. She doesn’t get it but the mystery and doubt surrounding Cassandra being missing is, itself, part of the whole package. And in her understanding that Kristen performing Cassandra’s miracles without her being her path back to her goddess, Kristen does hear Cassandra’s voice. She says “spies, tongue, curse.”

Kristen takes one of the shards from Cassandra and places it over Yolanda’s body and, while she cannot bring Yolanda back to life, she can feel a door open in front of her former teacher’s soul and frees her to rest. She does the same for Lucy. She is performing clerical magic without the aid of a god. It is a reminder that, as Brennan says, Kristen is one of the most powerful clerics ever.

And it is with these miracles, Kristen regains all of her abilities to cast magic.

Riz uses his connection at the soil club to have them test the cursed and weird dirt by the lake. Fabian calls the police to report the location of Lucy and Yolanda’s bodies. Over the weekend, the party long rests and then there’s a stint of downtime with the new additions to the season’s overall mystery.

Riz tries to find the rogue professor, which he doesn’t roll well on. However, he does great at his extracurriculars, which is helpful for the soil club looking into the dirt from the lake. As Kristen’s campaign manager, Riz now gets advantage of Charisma checks whenever he meets somewhere new. Riz finally talks to his mom, asking about the case against the Frostyfaire. However, it seems like it got dropped because her clients died.

Adaine has a vision of Gorgug doing artificer spells while in a barbarian rage. Gorgug goes to talk to Porter and ends up pushing him in anger (which Porter is loving as a physical embodiment of why Gorgug should be a barbarian). They have a really touching heart-to-heart and Gorgug gets an A+ in barbarian classes and then had Porter sign his MCAT. Porter mentions that with Grix gone, some of Aguefort’s more lax rules for helping students with grades might come into play. Especially since one of the classes is now being moved to pass-fail—the clerics, since Yolanda died.

While Adaine is working at the ice cream parlor, Aelwyn comes to visit her. Adaine goes on her lunch break and Aelwyn tells Adaine that she’s been working for Kipperlilly to make extra money as they head over to the burnt down Abernant home.